Asymmetry

by A. G. Claymore

  She grinned. “So we fight their lies with the truth?”

  “What?” Viggo pretended to be surprised but he knew she was shrewder than that. “You took that course on group dynamics too. We don’t have the luxury of tying one hand behind our backs just so we can be smug about it later!”

  “So we fight their clumsy lies with believable ones?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

  “You did get top marks in it,” Viggo replied. “And yet, you’re still the only person in this city I trust!”

  “Really?” Her voice grew soft, hesitant.

  “Okay, well, I do have some friends that I’m pretty sure would have my back but they’re hotheads. You’re the only person in Solomon that can actually help me turn this around and who I can trust with my life.”

  He stepped closer and took her hand. “I don’t know what you saw me saying the last time we talked but it has to be a mistake. I was probably going to make some stupid offhand comment without considering what it’s like from your perspective.” He was getting a little too solemn, so he went for a grin, hoping it looked natural.

  “If I’d really believed anything bad about you I wouldn’t have come here and placed myself entirely at your mercy.” He nodded at the ceiling where the holo-emitters were. “One word and you’d have security up here in a flash.”

  “Not if you got your new friend to eat me!” She tilted her head toward the chimera.

  “Now that you mention it,” he mused, “she hasn’t eaten in a while. Not since those two traders a few days ago.”

  She started to laugh but something in his tone stopped her. “Are you serious?”

  “About the traders.” He nodded. “Not about eating you, though…”

  “But the rebels are letting traders wander freely out in the jungle?” She’d taken on a focused look. “We can definitely use this! New document!” She grabbed the holoscreen that popped up and squeezed it into a sphere before tossing it across the room to a low couch. It returned to full size in front of the seat.

  She followed it and dropped down on the couch, patting the spot beside her.

  Does that mean she wants me to sit there? Viggo wondered but he’d hesitated too long and the chimera loped over and climbed up next to Hallie.

  She initially recoiled in fear but recovered quickly as the huge beast curled up next to her, hanging out over the edge of a sofa that was ludicrously small for such a large occupant. She let her left hand rest on its neck as she looked up at the screen.

  “If you wait, you’re too late,” Roj said, simply.

  “Okay,” Hallie said, voice brisk and businesslike, “we ought to start with the tertiary material, stuff we’ll reference further up the chain. Those dead traders will make for a juicy tidbit.”

  “They had to be sent there by someone who knew about that shuttle,” Viggo insisted. He walked over to the couch, hoping it looked natural, and sat on its arm next to her.

  “Shuttle?”

  “Yeah. Before the big shakeup, my dad had found an old crashed shuttle from those monks that died out thousands of years ago. He turned it into a comfortable little hunting lodge. I’m pretty sure he was meeting a girl out there, a Fletcher…”

  Her eyes seemed to double in size as she stared at him. “No way! Gods! It’s true then!”

  “What’s true?”

  She suddenly looked guarded. “Um, there was this argument, a couple of years ago, between Aunt Nell and Uncle Eddard. We were at one of the restaurants down in the fifties and Eddard was talking big – all the things he’d do to your dad if he ever got his hands on him.

  “He’s like that. He’s always had this weird fixation on Rick and none of us understood why. I mean, Rick Heywood’s not exactly our family’s favorite person but there’s a wide range of opinion on the matter. Most of us understand that he refrained from taking revenge on us for years of oppression…”

  She trailed off, embarrassed. Viggo put a hand on her shoulder and she sighed, closing her eyes for a moment. She covered his hand with her own, holding it there and looked up at him with a bleak smile.

  “Let’s not forget your uncle Barry,” Viggo said. “The minute he hears about this mess, he’ll be begging Admiral Towers to let him bring the ’Canal back here and start landing Marines.”

  She nodded, her smile growing in warmth. “He’ll be in a frenzy to put a stop to this nonsense before your parents show up. Barry would die before he lets your dad down.”

  “And your aunt, Nell?” Roj prodded gently.

  She nodded. “Nell was sitting there rolling her eyes at her husband, like she usually does when he goes off on a rant, but this time she snapped. She made an unfavorable comparison between him and Rick…”

  Viggo looked up at Roj, saw his shrug, then looked back down at her. “What did she say?”

  “Well… it was… physical…”

  “Hardly a secret,” Viggo said. “All that time bow-hunting builds you up.”

  She looked up at Roj, her face reddening.

  “Gods, man!” Roj exclaimed. “We were just talking about your father sowing wild oats with a Fletcher and her aunt was making a physical comparison to anger her husband. Do you actually need to hear a recording of the old gal saying he’s hung like a fan-tail buck before you clue in and let this young lady off the hook?”

  “Whoa!” Viggo closed his eyes. “Okay, umm… understood. Let’s just say I get it and we can move on!”

  Hallie took her hand from his and dragged a holographic keypad set into existence.

  “Haptic holographic interface?” Roj exclaimed. “That’s amazing!”

  Hallie favoured him with an amused glance. “I can go easy on the lurid details,” she said, fingers flying through the space above her lap, “but I’ll need an attention grabbing headline and it’s going to be weird if I ever talk to your dad in the future…”

  Viggo sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Okay, just leave the headline to me.”

  “How about ‘Nell Fletcher claims Rick Heywood is hung like a fan-tail buck?” Roj suggested.

  “How about…” Viggo bit off his angry retort. “You know, that might work pretty well, especially when I can tell my dad that neither I nor Hallie wrote it.”

  “Open an interface and start writing the article about the two off-worlders dying at a secret hideaway, supposedly known only to the Heywoods. I’m just finishing about my aunt’s youthful indiscretions and her bragging about it in public.”

  “This all seems too vague to be of much help,” Roj said dubiously.

  “Just wait and see how we build this up,” she said. She looked up at him. “Who exactly are you, anyway?”

  “Old family friend,” Viggo muttered, tapping away furiously.

  Roj ambled around the room, gazing intently at the various items as though they were new inventions which, from his perspective, they essentially were.

  “Done!” she announced. “Also squeezed in an article about how Rick and Freya are currently on an Alliance assignment supporting the rebels on Houthrid.” She shrugged. “There actually is an inhabited planet by that name and it’s inside Dactari territory.”

  “Done with the off-worlders,” Viggo said, still typing. “Just finishing another short item about a secret trade deal that will enrich a few of the more likely leaders of the power-grab here on 3428.”

  “Ooh!” She looked over at his screen. “Plausible and bound to stir up anger! You showoff!”

  “Just trying to keep up,” he told her.

  She was already typing, generating words faster than she could talk. “I’m working on the secondaries. I’ll claim Nell sent two off-worlders on a kill mission to eliminate Rick and Freya’s heir.”

  “I’ll do something juicy about a secret cabal of 3428 elites leading the mutiny so they can cash in on exclusive deals with the trading houses,” Viggo said absently, fingers dancing. “The rotten bastards are going to get richer while the regular folk get shafted…”

&
nbsp; “Probably not that far from the truth,” Hallie said, “and most folks already have that idea in their head, anyway. They might just believe it without following the links to our supporting lies… I mean articles…”

  “They’ll want to believe it,” Viggo agreed, “because it tells them they’re right. Remember what Thorstein told us: ‘When folks get confirmation they’re right, they don’t want to go looking for evidence that the confirmation is false.’ We’re writing the tertiaries to convince our opponents. The secondaries and the primary are there to whip up our supporters.”

  “I’ve found some older articles about the hydroponics project,” she said, mostly to herself. “We’ll scrub out the old stuff and put in our own material and…”

  She touched the Enter key, a soft click confirming the input.

  “Our secondaries and tertiaries are live, and the stuff about my aunt and your dad will show as having been up for more than a year.” She opened up a NowThink interface. “The primary has to be completely different. Something nobody would ever see as following the same pattern as the other levels.”

  “A video rant?” Viggo suggested. “A NowThink text isn’t different enough.”

  She nodded, opening the app’s video interface. “I should…”

  The door chime startled them all.

  A view screen appeared in their interfaces showing a young armed man in a security uniform. It was inevitable. With so many reports of a wild animal, a search would have to be conducted wherever the elevator car had stopped.

  “Quick!” she hissed, making shooing motions with her hands, “get in my bedroom, the three of you!”

  She followed them in, shoving them to the right before ducking into the door to her bathroom.

  Viggo already knew what he’d see but that didn’t stop him from watching her strip off her t-shirt as she walked away from them. The graceful curves of her back were burned into his brain and his knees felt weak. She rounded the corner and passed out sight for a moment and he was only dimly aware that the officer had used a security override to enter Hallie’s quarters.

  He was still only tangentially aware of the risk of discovery as he saw what was to come. The shower started running and she reappeared with a towel around her hair and one hand holding a silk robe closed at the front. She aimed a grimace at him and took her hand away from the robe just before rounding the corner into the room they’d just left.

  Viggo averted his eyes but it was a bit of a cheat. He already knew the robe would stay closed until she’d turned.

  Roj jumped when she screamed.

  “What are you doing, you pervert?” she yelled. “Get out!”

  “Sorry, ma’am! I… we… umm… looking for a…”

  The stammer-fest was cut short by something that sounded very much like a vase hitting someone in the face and shattering.

  “Sick bastard! You’re the one who’s been hacking my sensor suite aren’t you?”

  “What? Oh gods no! I was just…”

  Something bounced off him and clattered to the floor.

  Viggo was trying to hold back his laughter. His jealousy for the security officer’s view helped a great deal in that effort.

  “Oh, gods!” she yelled. “How long has my robe been open? Why didn’t you say anything? Computer, record this officer’s badge number.”

  A chime confirmed the order.

  “If I find out you’ve accessed your body-cam footage, I’ll personally stake you out in the jungle with no salve and I’ll risk a trip into the highlands to do it!”

  “Honestly, I never…”

  “Out!”

  There were the sounds of a one-sided shoving match and then the door snapped shut.

  She came in, robe securely tied now, and sat on the bed. “Okay,” she said, reopening her interface. “Let’s get a video ready.”

  Viggo’s mind was still struggling to catch up. He’d been on the run, found an entire society that was thought to be extinct and even made friends with a family of chimera.

  But the thought of Hallie in an open robe was, apparently, a bit too much for him to process. He stood dumbly while she composed herself.

  “I don’t know who the kingpin is,” she said, “so let’s go generic for now. Record.”

  “Hey, everybody. It’s Hallie. I’m sure you’ve all heard the rumors that there’s a coup going on and that the leaders don’t care how many of us die, as long as they can get a bigger slice of the spice-wood profits. I’ve been in touch with my uncle, Barry, on the Guadalcanal and he can confirm that the Heywoods have not been arrested by the Alliance and he also confirms that he’s pissed as hell and he’s recalling his ground troops from the surface of 4856 as I speak.”

  Viggo thought that was a nice touch, one that Barry Fletcher would probably endorse if he’d known about it.

  “Even worse than the lies we’ve been fed is the news that an attempt has been made on Viggo’s life by off-world mercs. Let that sink in for a moment. The wealthy elite are trying to put all of us past the point of no return by murdering the heir to the planet. They want us to fight and die for their profit.

  “Check out the article linked below and pass it on.” She leaned in. “Don’t let this happen. We need to hit the pedways and make our opposition known! Repost this video to everyone you know and then get your asses in gear! I’ll see you out there in a few minutes.”

  Viggo managed to recover his wits in time to press the Stop button. “That should help a lot,” he said. “With you guys drawing all of the attention, we can slip up to the executive suite.” He paused. “Don’t take any stupid risks out there, OK?”

  “I’ll be fine.” She clambered off the bed. “Now get out of my room; I need to get dressed. I can’t lead a revolt in my robe.”

  “I’m not sure about that,” he told her. “I’d follow you!”

  “Out!”

  Inflection Point

  About the Pay…

  June’s assault-shuttle – Rykeria

  “Shit!” The pilot pulled back on the controls, slamming Freya backward into Gabiola.

  They tumbled to the deck, rolling to a stop against Arsh’s legs, which, at least, were a good backstop, as he’d already strapped into his seat.

  The assault-shuttle lurched again and then accelerated, pulling a hard enough turn to overmatch the inertial compensators. “Taking ground fire from a self-propelled triple-A gun!” the pilot shouted.

  He put the nose up, swerving constantly as they climbed to make a harder target. Freya scrambled past Rick and Tim at the forward end of the cargo-area seating and entered the cockpit. “June, can we…”

  A flash in the upper atmosphere seared through the cockpit windows. As the spots in Freya’s vision faded, a Republic heavy cruiser took their place. “What the hells?”

  It was at least thirty kilometers above them, the same level as the orbital control ships that had dropped into the atmosphere in order to provide a denser screen. Even at that distance, the ship looked intimidatingly large. The effect was reinforced by the atmospheric hazing – preventing the brain from forgetting how far away it was.

  The damned things didn’t look so big out in the black.

  “That cruiser must have their secondary jump drive spooled up,” the pilot said. “They’re putting out a disturbance – a really big one – that’s keeping us from using our own drives. I can’t get a green light in any direction!”

  “It’s the orbital control ships!” June slammed her fist on the side of a console. “They’re using their shields to propagate the field from the cruiser! The whole raid is trapped down here. They must have gotten word about our new drives!”

  “We’ll have to fight our way out,” Freya said, face grim.

  “Be lucky to see one ship in ten survive against that,” the pilot said, shaking his head slowly.

  She suppressed a sigh. “It’s not like we’re plagued with options. Open a channel to all ships in the raid.”

  A faint hiss of
sound permeated the assault-shuttle as the channel opened to every ship. Freya took a deep breath through her nose and opened her mouth to give the order…

  “Hey, boss.” Thorstein’s voice gave her a slight twitch of surprise. “Is this a bad time to tell you that I’ve decided to accept an exciting new opportunity?”

  Rykeria – Thorstein’s Scout-Ship

  “Thor?” Freya sounded annoyed. “This is not the time…”

  “Oh, it’s the time alright,” he cut her off. “’Cause this is the only time we have.” He finished setting up his waypoints and, after a slight pause, activated his first move. The scout-ship started falling back to the surface.

  “I couldn’t resist,” he said, tightening his restraints even though they would make no difference in the moments to come. “The hours are good but the pay is absolute shite!”

  He’d reached his waypoint. The next one showed green with a red boundary around it. This far, he thought, and no farther. From here, he could initiate a jump but it still wouldn’t get past the net and the minimum jump distance was well past where the net was set up.

  “Thor, NO!” a young voice filled the cockpit.

  He smiled sadly. “Tim! It’s good to see that a teenager can occasionally listen to an old man, even with Cara sitting next to him…”

  “We can fight!” the youngster insisted.

  “I know you can, kid,” he said softly, “but you shouldn’t take every fight your enemy offers you. They usually have a compelling reason for the offer and it’s usually not gonna be good for you. Consider that my last lesson. Pass it on to the gang back at 3428.”

  He could hear hushed voices, probably from Tim explaining to Freya. Thorstein was grateful for that. He was willing to do this but explaining the concept seemed a little too grandiose, too unheroic…

  “Thor,” Freya began but her voice betrayed her. “Save a place for us in the feasting hall.” Her voice took on an edge again. “All ships, raid – all ships, raid, this is Freya. Command is temporarily transferred to Thorstein. Follow his orders and he’ll get us all out!”

  Thorstein closed his eyes and gave her a silent nod that she’d never see. This would be a deed the skalds would write songs about for generations – the leader of the raid giving his life in battle to save the founder of the LRG.