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

by Edward McKeown

  “It’s Indigo,” the HCR called in Mmok’s voice. “Lousy drop, Fenaday. You were a thousand meters off. Follow Indigo back to the main body.” The HCR walked into sight, its doll’s eyes fastened on him.

  “Any landing you can walk away from,” Fenaday quoted. “Everyone else make it down all right?”

  “One ASAT landed badly; medic says he’s not concussed. He’ll make it. Crab 17 is too badly damaged to move. Had it bury itself.”

  The HCR set a good pace, and Fenaday huffed, keeping up over the rough ground.

  In a few minutes, they rejoined the rest of the force. Fenaday felt naked, traveling without either Shasti or Telisan. He was relieved when Li, Morgan and the Tok brothers came over, forming up around him of their own accord.

  Risky was too well-trained to fuss or whine when he saw Fenaday. He came over and butted his head against the man, until Fenaday petted the K-9. Then the dog went back to work watching the area. Lance Corporal Schiller stayed close to his canine companion.

  Fenaday looked over at him. “Remember, keep an eye to him. He has a special signal for Shasti. If he puts his right paw on his nose then goes on point in a direction, that’s where Shasti is.”

  “Yes sir,” replied the young K-9 handler, “I remember.”

  “Of course.”

  They set out for Pard’s complex. Mmok’s crab robots spread out about a hundred meters to act as a screen. The airbot hovered silently above them in the dark, occasionally darting off to check their route. The machine had another purpose. It broadcast a low-level EM jamming field over them that interfered with optical and heat detection, just in case a satellite should look down. HCRs formed the inner screen. The rest walked in a ranger file behind Mmok and Rask. With luck and speed, they could reach the area above the complex in a few hours, time enough to attack well before dawn. Dominici’s maps laid out the best hope for a safe approach, with traps and sensors marked. Mmok’s machines would see them around any unscheduled patrols or remote sensors. Fenaday prayed Dominici’s information on Pard’s whereabouts was accurate. To attack and miss spelled doom for everyone. Dominici claimed a Denshi deprived of Pard would be divided, slow to react, its alliances suddenly cast into doubt. He hoped to God that she knew what she was talking about.

  *****

  “Come in, Paula,” Antebei said. His eyes roamed over her body, making her feel unclean. He seemed in a good humor. The call must have brought pleasing news. “Now,” he added as she hesitated. No, she thought to herself, he wants to celebrate. No. Obedience was her only protection, but the thought of him on her, in her, filled her with nausea. What choice did she have? Her feet moved her into the room almost as if they belonged to someone else.

  He pulled her to him, sweeping her off the ground as if she weighed nothing.

  Something snapped in her brain. Suddenly, she began fighting, clawing, her face stretched tight over her skull, teeth showing, eyes mad. It only excited Antebei more. He slammed her down on his desk, tearing her clothes open, thrusting himself inside her. Paula screamed and bit. No help came. Those in Section Seven knew better than to interrupt their master’s play. He pawed her large breasts, biting her again.

  Reason banished, she pulled back as far she could and spat. “You perverted lab-made freak,” she screamed.

  It drove Antebei further into a rage. He slammed a huge fist against her temple. Paula’s senses faded. Bastard, she thought, unable to speak. I’ll get you, bastard. You murder me and I’ll still get you. He snapped her head to one side with one massive hand, pressing it against the desk. She felt pressure and heaviness and then nothing at all.

  *****

  Antebei pushed himself off the body, rage and lust satisfied. He looked down at the canted neck, the blackening bruise and staring eyes. Staggering like a drunk, he reached a wall, reveling in the dark afterglow of it. He moaned with the sensual, liquid tingle running over his nerves. It ebbed quickly. Like a man surfacing from a deep dive, he drew a breath, shook his head and looked about the room, as if seeing it for the first time. His eyes came to rest on the body, with its torn clothes, flat on his desk.

  “No,” he said in horror. “No, not again, no.” He lunged to her side. “No, no don’t be dead. Paula, wake up.” It was no use. She was gone, beyond remorse, beyond any apology.

  “Why,” he demanded, “why fight me? You know I have no control when I’m like that. I always make it good later. Why?” he demanded, shaking the corpse like a child’s doll.

  She slipped off the desk to the floor, falling as only the dead do. Antebei swore.

  After a while, he collected himself, using the com on his desk to call his bodyguard, Chatelaine. “There’s been an accident,” he said numbly, “a terrible accident.” The horror fled as if it had never been, leaving behind the usual grayness in which he lived, when not lit by rage.

  “Yes, sir,” replied Chatelaine in a professional tone. He’d grown familiar with Antebei’s accidents. “Where did it happen?”

  “The parking level garage. My secretary fell. Please come by my office and pick up the necessary materials. Use our private entrance.”

  “Yes sir, on my way.”

  Antebei looked at Kallian once more. “I really thought I might feel something, this time,” he said thickly. “I hoped I would. They made me too good, Paula. All I am is an assassin. It’s all I can be.”

  He closed the door on the way out. It seemed respectful.

  *****

  Vaughn’s silver and black aircar settled to the pad, blowing up the usual desert grit. As soon as the ground wheels touched, he hopped out, slamming the door and striding for Tanaka’s apartment. She lived in a small, unattached building near the edge of the complex. He’d ordered it built for her after he’d come to power. Now he moved up the sand and gravel path, past the garden plants she so carefully tended, fighting the desire to break into a run. Tanaka was inexplicably unavailable. Even her personal com-link didn’t respond, a serious security violation. A frisson of fear shot through him. Had Antebei made some move against her? The thought of how bare his back would be without Tanaka quickened his steps. For a second, he debated calling for backup. To be wrong would be to look foolish. Ridicule could be as dangerous as weapon fire to a man in his position. He checked his pistol and strode boldly up the walkway.

  His fears were for nothing. Tanaka opened the door at his ring.

  “My Lord,” she said dully. Her eyes looked puffy. Tanaka crying? Impossible.

  Worry flared to anger. “What have you been doing? Why are you not at our office? Why this dereliction?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Dereliction. Failure in one’s duties. Indeed, I am derelict today.” She walked back into the apartment. Perforce he followed.

  He frowned at her, anger replaced by confusion. “I do not understand? What’s going on?”

  “I have been derelict,” she replied, visibly pulling herself together. “I’ve failed. Paula Kallian’s body was found in the sub-garage. A fall, they say. She lies in the morgue. The family has been sent for.”

  Vaughn crossed his arms. “Unfortunate, most unfortunate. Still, if Antebei discovered she was working for us, he would hardly have killed her. No, she would have been useful against us. This smacks of his sickness, a sudden rage perhaps.”

  “Perhaps she could no longer stand his touch,” Tanaka said, looking out the window into the fading orange-reds of the desert. Sunset brought deep purples and blues that halted just beyond the sodium lights of the complex.

  “Foolish,” he said. “It was almost over.”

  Tanaka walked away from him suddenly. She opened the door to the porch and stepped out. The desert air hit him like the slap he sensed Tanaka wanted to deliver. He followed her out. Standing behind her, he searched for something to say. “Misa, you were crying, weren’t you? Why?”

  “We couldn’t even save one abused kid,” she said. “That’s pretty poor, don’t you think? A mother’s pain, a father’s dreams, now cold meat on a s
lab. I’m just glad that after forty-three years in Denshi, I still can cry over a murdered child. She’d have been nineteen next month.”

  “It is unfortunate,” he repeated. “I would have honored my promise. You know that.”

  “Yes,” she said, relenting a little. “That is all you feel though, isn’t it? That the death of this poor young woman, escaped from the dregs of the underclass, abused by the powerful, murdered when she was so close to freedom is....unfortunate.”

  “What else?” Vaughn said, confused and annoyed. “What is it you want of me?”

  “Tell me. Would you feel any more, if it was me dead?”

  He did not answer, unable to find words.

  “What would you have of me, Tanaka?” he said, finally.

  “I have a favor to ask,” she said, still looking out into the desert.

  “Ask.”

  “Go see Kallian’s body. It’s in the morgue. Watch the family when they come. Then come back and tell me what you feel.”

  “Enough with this foolishness,” he snapped, pulling her around roughly. She did not resist his tremendous strength. “We have work to do.”

  She looked up, black, impenetrable eyes staring into his. “Not I, my Lord. If you will not grant me this favor, then I have no further work to do. I will be leaving your service. Even if my retirement is to be no different than hers.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” he said.

  “I need to know,” she said looking at him, “if there is more to the Engineered, more to you than rage, anger and the need to dominate others. I need to see something more.”

  “This is ridiculous,” he replied. “What need do I have to feel more? How does it profit you? You are rendered weak and unfit by these soft emotions. Yet you demand them of me. Tanaka, see reason. I’ll forgive this foolishness, but enough.”

  “No, my Lord. You may dismiss me, or I will leave. Or in this one last thing, do as I ask you. I will never again trouble you with these matters. Or is it that you are afraid of what you might feel?”

  “I will go,” he said coldly. “When I return, we will discuss if you have any place in Denshi.” He spun on his heel and walked back out to the aircar. Anger darkened his gaze. He feared to stay even another second, lest there be another Kallian.

  Vaughn’s aircar zipped the short distance to the administration building. He parked in the secured parking area for VIPs, then made his way inside. It would not do for Antebei, if he had no suspicions, to learn of his interest in Kallian. He used a restricted accessway, moving through maintenance and utility passages. His electronic pass made him invisible to the security systems. There were other safeguards that did not answer to his pass. These he avoided. He was not Fourth-Generation for nothing.

  Vaughn moved by secret ways to the morgue, entering through the upper gallery, a place normally reserved for students. For a big man, he could move quietly at need. Instinctively, he slipped into a shadowed section by a ceiling support. From there he peered down into the morgue and the table on which Paula Kallian lay. She lay modestly covered with a sheet. Her bruised, waxy face aroused a strange feeling in him. Pity? Regret? Mere words to him. Yet why did his stomach feel in knots? Why this unease at the sight of a body? He had seen enough before and been the cause of many. Today, somehow, it was different.

  A commotion at the far end caught his attention. He faded further back into the shadows. Several handsome, efficient Denshi medical personnel escorted two smaller figures, older people, Selected, but low order. The woman, on whom age’s hand lay heavily for an Olympian, staggered, held by a harried, sickly-looking man. My God, Vaughn thought, he’s balding. Their genetics were obviously so terrible he wondered how they had ever been licensed to marry. They’d been denied children, Kallian had been Unsanctioned. Lowest of the low on Olympia. No wonder she had been so desperate for the job with Denshi.

  The older woman threw herself at the body, harsh tearing sobs erupting from her. “Oh my baby, my baby, what have they done to you?”

  “Madam,” one of the techs said, “it was an accident, a most unfortunate fall...”

  Kallian’s mother ignored them. Her father knelt next to her trying to console her. The sobs turned into screams of accusation. “Bastards,” she shrieked. “You killed her. Don’t think we don’t know.” She sobbed like a lost soul.

  Suddenly there was no air in the room, and the walls were closing in. Vaughn, who had never fled anything, fled the morgue and its well of grief. Once back in the hidden passage, he flashed up the stairs till he reached the wide, high gallery level over the ground floor. There he slipped into the public sections of the building. Out among people again, he schooled himself back under control with the biofeedback skills of the Fourth-Generation. He commanded his heart to slow, his adrenaline level to drop and his breathing to return to normal. In a few paces he was to all the outside world, Mikhail Vaughn, Head of Section Three.

  Inside, something had changed. Kallian’s mother’s screams cut themselves into his soul. A certain innocence was lost. Damn you, Tanaka, he thought, you intended this. What good does it do an assassin to learn such things? He reached for the car’s com. “Tanaka,” he called.

  “Sir?”

  “Meet me in the plaza, outside our office. I have done as you asked.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  *****

  Telisan used the secure line, at least he hoped it was secure, with the book encryption. Sue Bernard placed the call in the Olympian net. It went through quickly.

  “Here,” was the only reply, but he recognized General Dominici’s voice.

  “We are at the port, our forces will reach the objective at or around 0300.”

  “One day, you have to tell me how. We are ready at our end. As soon as satellite cameras pick up weapons fire on the objective, we will initiate blocking maneuvers and cut reinforcements off. Are you secure?”

  “Barely. We are buttoned up and all hands are armed. Denshi and Navy Security tried to board us after the tugs moved us into dry-dock. So far I have been able to keep them off the ship by screaming assassination on every public channel. I’m demanding guards from the Confederate Embassy,” Telisan said. “I’ve tried reaching the embassy; the ambassador is unavailable.”

  “Clever bastard,” Dominici said. “All right, we will get Army troops down to you as soon as we can. You’ve got to keep Denshi off the ship.”

  “Denshi Security sent an ultimatum a few minutes ago advising that if we did not open the hatches, we would be boarded by force,” Telisan said. “I told them I would consider it an act of piracy and respond in force if they did.”

  A fusillade of shots rang out behind Telisan. He looked up at the monitor to see a party of Denshi or Navy scattering back toward cover. Sidhe’s crew fired from airlock loopholes made to pass tools in and out without cycling the big doors. Not ideal, still it allowed them to put fire down without exposing the ship to a rush. All the real troops were off with Fenaday and Mmok. He had over one hundred and fifty crewmen, but Telisan did not give much for their chances against regular military. Their only hope lay in staying buttoned up and keeping enemy ground forces at a distance.

  “Hurry,” he said to Dominici.

  “Keep your pants on, flyboy, at least till I get there. Dominici out.”

  Sharla reached over and stabbed the off button, muttering in Denleni about those who mate out of season.

  *****

  Tanaka met Vaughn outside, by his parked aircar. Vaughn hoped a walk in the desert wind might lift the tearing screams of Paula Kallian’s mother out of his mind. They still ripped at his nerves in a way nothing else ever had, as if they’d left an echo of agony to reverberate in his skull.

  The pair went barely a dozen feet before an aide ran up to Tanaka with a message. The young Denshi trooper handed it to her, bowed to Vaughn and discreetly faded away.

  Tanaka crumpled the paper and tossed it on the ground. “Some days, nothing goes right. The god damn bomb went off. Fenad
ay was outside, in a shuttle. It’s gone. Sidhe’s wrecked and heading for the spaceport. They never reported the bombing, so the shuttle came down and the Moussas got away.

  “We overestimated them. They must have blown up the bomb trying to disarm it. It’s over,” she continued. “Antebei has succeeded, and we will become an organization of butchers.”

  A leaden heaviness enveloped Vaughn, but he shook his head. “Still you misjudge. Pard will be angry with him. He is not as you think.”

  “He’s not that different,” Tanaka snapped. “He’s had his own Kallians, a string of them. Rainhell was his mistake. She was Engineered and could fight back. We real humans seem to be toys to you Engineered.”

  Vaughn’s face went dark with rage. “Enough,” he roared. His hand snapped to her throat, smacking aside her parry. He lifted her into the air, blue eyes burning, grip locked on her trachea. She should have been fighting. There were techniques for this. Tanaka knew them, she’d taught them to him.

  “Go ahead, Aristo,” she hissed. “You’re no different than the others. Go ahead.”

  Vaughn’s mind whirled, shocked by his sudden rage and loss of control. Blue eyes locked into Tanaka’s black ones, seeing many things there: fear, hate, love, depths and nuances, other things too complicated to put names to. She was a true human; he was the product of labs. All his loyalties lay in tatters. Tanaka had guarded his back since his teens. She spoke ill of Pard and the Engineered. Yet what had Pard been to him but a brutal taskmaster? Didn’t the crimes she laid at the door of the Engineered belong there? Even Rainhell, one of his own kind, had been used as a toy, a piece of property, with no concern for her own needs.

  Emotions boiled away. Gently, he lowered her, running a huge hand over her hair. Tanaka did not shy away. She simply stood, her eyes still holding his.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, feeling numb and exhausted. “Sorry,” he repeated, stroking her hair, his voice rough and thick. “Did I hurt you? Are you all right?”