Was Once a Hero

FEARFUL SYMMETRY

The second Book in the Shasti and Fenaday Chronicles

By Edward McKeown





Prologue



The war against the Conchirri irrevocably altered the Confederacy of Seven Species, as the Seven collided with and destroyed the eighth race in known space. The Conchirri, usually called the Xenophobes, possessed only one reaction to any other life form, genocidal fury. They could not be understood, reasoned with, or intimidated, only destroyed. It was a hard lesson for the Confederacy, but they learned it well. The Second Sector War ended the Conchirri and, with them, the old Confederacy which had been little more than a trading association. The Seven now looked at the stars warily, with weapons to hand and a grim promise of “never again.” They had looked into an abyss and it had looked into them. In that much they’d become the thing they'd destroyed.

Much else disappeared in that war, lives, hopes and loves, including Lt. Commander Lisa Fenaday and her scoutship the C.S.S. Blackbird. Her husband, Robert Fenaday, went nearly mad with grief. Flying a captured frigate renamed Sidhe, he roamed space, searching for his wife and killing Conchirri mercilessly. Shasti Rainhell, a genetically engineered assassin rescued by him on one voyage, joined him in his search. They became a team, until the war ended and the market for privateers dried up.

In despair, Fenaday landed on Mars, only to find himself drafted by Lisa’s former boss, a man identified only as Mandela. With Rainhell and two new companions, Ace-pilot Telisan and the ancient scholar Duna, Fenaday voyaged to the devastated world of Enshar. They defeated the ancient evil that had scoured the planet clean of intelligent life. Sidhe’s survivors and Fenaday, who finally laid the ghost of his wife to rest, began to pick up the pieces of their lives. But the past has a way of reaching out for you...