Read Ure Infectus (Imperium Cicernus Book 4) Online
Authors: Caleb Wachter
“So you won’t condemn the people who
pay
the bribe,”
she said in wonderment, genuinely surprised at his dismissive rationale. “But
you will ‘Adjust’ the person who
accepts
it?” she asked with an open
challenge in her voice.
“Exactly,” he said in what she took to be mock approval,
which made her clench her jaw tight to forestall a sharp objection. “When the
contents of Cantwell’s Mark of Adjustment are made public, the body politic
will have an opportunity to choose whether or not to provide the PHL with
continued financial support.” He smirked and shook his head as though in
bewilderment, “A sharp decline in revenue hurts a corporation far more than a
bullet to the skull of its director ever could.”
He turned and made his way to the cot he had used for the
previous week and a half, and Masozi called after him in irritation, “I’m not
finished with my questions.”
“Open the file stored on that pad named ‘Goat’ and examine
the evidence it contains,” he said without turning to face her. “Whether you
like it or not, you’ve become a part of this so you might as well make yourself
useful.” He turned and gave her a dry look before adding, “Until you decide to
do your civic duty and turn me in, of course.”
“Message for you, boss man,” Benton called out, and Jericho awoke from his nap at once. He threw his legs over the edge of the cot—which was surprisingly comfortable for a device of its nature—and made his way to Benton’s bedside.
He didn’t even need to look to know that Masozi was asleep.
It had been four days since he’d given her the Goat assignment, and she had been remarkably focused in her efforts to unravel the latest mystery thrown her way. Jericho could understand how she ended up working as an Investigator in one of Virgin’s most populous cities.
“Have you verified it?” Jericho asked as he reached Benton’s large bio-bed. The cost of the aperture must have been tremendous, and the continuous supply of drugs and synthetic biological components must have cost literally millions of credits per year, but he knew that money was the least of Benton’s worries.
“Sure thing,” Benton replied in his increasingly aggravating archeo-slang. “
You’s
been waitin’ for it, and now you’s got it.”
A sharp look from Jericho made Benton roll his eyes in deference as he nodded. Jericho looked up to the bank of monitors on the far wall as it sprang to life with several hundred distinct images, and as he had seen Benton do countless times before, the master hacker extracted the required data from each of the displayed sources and migrated those scraps of information onto a single screen.
The entire process took no more than a minute and when Benton had finished compiling the data Jericho saw a long, completely unintelligible message spelled out. That message was then run through a decryption filter and a new message appeared which read:
Well done in New Lincoln. Meet me at the unusual place in Aegis and we’ll discuss your next assignment(s)—O
“You’ve verified every bit of verbiage?” Jericho repeated deliberately. He needed to know for certain that he was to meet in the ‘unusual’ place, rather than the ‘usual,’ or ‘abnormal,’ or ‘normal’ place. He had only been summoned in this fashion once before…and it had been under very different circumstances.
“Yes,” Benton replied shortly, clearly upset with Jericho’s insistence that he stick to a vocabulary that at the very least
resembled
modern parlance.
“Ok,” Jericho said as he considered the implications. He had expected such a summons—in fact, he had quite literally done everything in his power to achieve such a meeting with what could be roughly termed his ‘superior’ within the Timent Electorum’s hierarchy…if the T.E. could be said to have such a thing. “Good work, Benton,” he said with genuine feeling, “and thank you for allowing us to hitch a ride to Aegis. I know how much you value your privacy.”
Benton shot him an angry look before a grin spread across his borderline grotesque features. “Ain’t nuthin’ but a thang, bro,” he said with infectious positivity, and for once Jericho let his top operator’s penchant for odd speech pass. It would have been more than a little difficult to secure passage for Masozi out of New Lincoln without Benton’s help—and even if it had been possible, it would have been incredibly expensive.
But, again, money wasn’t something Benton lost sleep over.
If, for some unforeseen reason, his current revenue stream was to dry up there was little doubt in Jericho’s mind that his top operator would go on with literally no interruption. There were probably only a few dozen people in the Sector who could match Benton’s skill with acquiring, storing, manipulating, and then transmitting data without being detected in the process. He was truly the apex predator of the information world, and Jericho was acutely aware of just how fortunate he had been to not only call on him as an ally, but to consider him a genuine friend.
“How’s Eve doing?” Jericho asked somewhat awkwardly. He had not seen the re-programmed hover drone in quite a few days and had actually begun to wonder if something had gone amiss with ‘her.’
Benton rolled his eyes emphatically. “Women
be
women,” he said, as though he was confessing some great secret. “I understand they need lovin’ attention and all but lemme tell you something, dawg: Eve takes the term ‘high maintenance’ to an all-new level.
Forget about the ‘stratosphere;’ we talkin’ straight-up ‘thermosphere,’ feel me?”
Jericho was quite certain that he could not ‘feel him,’
whatever that actually meant, so he sighed. He was fairly certain that Benton’s increasingly prominent delusions about Eve would one day be his undoing, but in truth he couldn’t fault the other man for crawling inside a fantasy and letting it become part of everything he did. Jericho knew all too well the temptation to do that very thing…
Apparently Benton took his sigh for one of sympathy because he, too, sighed. “Yeah, you
be
wise to it,” he said with a knowing look before squirming slightly in his bed. “Can you hand me that jar?” he asked, indicating a small, glassy-looking container with a bluish liquid inside. “Eve usually helps me with this sorta thing, but she
be
down for a little nap at the moment,” he explained as Jericho handed him the jar. “Thanks, dawg,” he said as he opened the jar and Jericho could not help but feel a measure of revulsion as Benton plucked a small, greyish, amorphous blob from the blue liquid and placed it on his chest.
As soon as the blob hit his skin, it flattened into a small disc. A few moments after that it lengthened and narrowed before slowly moving its way down his chest toward his many abdominal rolls. Benton plucked two more of the leech-like creatures from the jar before closing it and handing the container back to Jericho, who wordlessly placed the jar where it had been.
“I would have been dead ten years ago if not for these little suckers,” Benton said seriously, dropping his absurd speech pattern momentarily. “Even with the bio-bed, my family curse is rippin’ my neurons apart…it’s really only a matter of time before simple biology catches up to me and I stop bein’ entirely.”
Jericho nodded in understanding as the three leech-looking creatures disappeared into Benton’s skin folds. “How long do you think you have?” he asked.
“With a constant supply of these little guys,” Benton replied nonchalantly, “three, maybe four years. Without ‘em…maybe a month,” he shrugged.
“Why not go through gene therapy?” Jericho asked, having never ventured to question Benton’s failure to do so. “Don’t tell me you couldn’t afford it.”
Benton snickered. “
Nah,
ain’t nuthin’ like that; at some point we all gotta respect who, and what, we are and be at peace with it. I’m a God-damned genius the likes of which this Sector has never seen—and I be usin’ that gift for the betterment of my peoples every waking moment of my life,” he said, his voice taking on an almost religious tone. “Every star what don’t get sucked into a black hole eventually burns out, and the brightest ones go quickest of all…but everyone gets touched by their passin’ and they leave behind the greatest legacy of all: order from chaos, and complex structure from simplicity. That’s some cosmically poetic shit right there, feel me?”
While Jericho would have liked to dismiss Benton’s ramblings as those of a delusional man trying to come to grips with his own mortality, he suspected the truth was that Benton had life better figured than he did himself. “I think I take your meaning,” Jericho said after a moment’s consideration.
“Good,” Benton said almost defensively before asking, “what you want me to reply to ‘Mr. O’?”
Jericho shook his head. “Nothing,” he replied simply, “I know where to go.”
“What about sleeping beauty over there?” Benton jerked his head toward the still-sleeping Masozi. “You don’t actually trust her, do you?”
Jericho snorted softly before giving Benton a meaningful look, “I trusted
you
didn’t
I
?” The big man made as if to protest, but Jericho shook his head and continued, “What I said to each of you was true: human psychology isn’t that complicated to me. She may not have accepted the reality of the situation just yet, but she won’t do anything I haven’t already planned for…and I may need you to trust me on that particular point later on,” he added with a hint of iron in his voice.
Benton held his gaze for several seconds before relenting and giving a shrug. “I trust you, Jericho,” he said eventually. “But if you be goin’ where I think you
be
goin’…”
Jericho nodded in total understanding. “I’ll need you here anyway,” he assured Benton. The truth was he would have preferred to have his top operator with him where he was going but Benton’s talents would likely go underutilized in his next mission, which figured to be considerably more blunt-force-trauma than surgical incision. “Track the feeds for me and send regular packets via courier; if I need your help I won’t hesitate to call for support.”
“I can do you one better than off-site support,” Benton said with a knowing grin. Jericho quirked an eyebrow, but the bedridden man shook his head, “I’ll explain once everything’s ready…but it just be a loan and you gotta promise to take care of things should something happen to me, feel me?”
“No, I don’t ‘feel you’,” Jericho said with thinly-veiled exasperation at Benton’s insistence on using patterns of speech which had been dead—apparently with good reason—for several millennia. He sighed before adding, “But I do trust you.”
The
Esmerelda Empática
was scheduled to pull into
port just ten hours after Masozi had completed her perusal of the ‘Goat’ file
on the data pad which Jericho had given her…and what she had discovered cast
serious shadows on her long-held confidence in the Sector’s system of
government.
When she had completed reading the information and
subsequently compiling notes, she knew it was time to confront Jericho.
“I’ve read the ‘Goat’ file,” she said after making the short
walk from her cot to his. “Is even half of this true?”
Jericho shrugged. “That’s what you’re going to find out,” he
replied seriously before his voice turned playful. “Assuming, of course, that I
may retain my freedom for the foreseeable future?”
She was more than slightly put off by his apparent lack of
concern regarding their collective situation, but she had managed to find some
measure of acceptance in her own plight over the previous weeks aboard the
ocean-going vessel. Masozi held the data slate up and gestured to it seriously,
“This information suggests that a colonial governor—“
“Has been acting in direct contravention to the betterment
of his,” he interrupted before adding pointedly, “or, rather,
her
people, and has done so with what would seem to be reckless disregard for more
than a few Sector Laws. I have actually
read
the file, Investigator,” he chided with a hint of sarcasm.
Masozi very much disliked being interrupted, but she held
her tongue and continued, “These records even show what appears to be the
T.E.’s system for identifying potential…Adjustments,” she reluctantly bit out
the word.
“As I said,” Jericho said in a conversational tone, but his
eyes bored into her own while he did so, “I’m taking a big risk by including
you in all of this.”
“It doesn’t seem to be much of a risk,” she sniffed, hating
the way the protestation sounded as it passed her lips. But despite her
irritation with herself, she pressed on with what she had come to realize
during her time in Benton’s container, “If I don’t at least appear to be
playing along with you, you’ll just kill me and drop me into the water for the scrapers
to deal with. It doesn’t seem to me that you’re taking
any
risks here,
so please stop insulting my intelligence by suggesting that anything you’ve
done to this point has exposed either of you.”
Jericho’s eyes narrowed briefly before he chuckled. “There
aren’t any out here,” he said simply.
Her brow furrowed before lowering thunderously. “Aren’t any
what?” she demanded as his laughter grew.
He shook his head in mock bewilderment. “Scrapers,” he
laughed, and Benton joined him briefly before Jericho added, “they only live
along the coastlines. Out here, you’d be digested by what passes for jellyfish
on this world…and I’m told that would be significantly more unpleasant than the
quick death you’d get from a scraper.” He schooled his features before
continuing just before she could retort, “But your point is well-taken. That’s
why I’m letting you off the ship first—if that’s what you’d like, of course.”
Masozi cocked her head before sneering. “You would have me
test the port security. If I get caught, you won’t have to risk exposing
yourselves, is that it? I’m not a moron,” she said acidly.
“I don’t think you’re a moron,” Jericho said lightly. “If
you had given me cause to believe that you
are
one,” Jericho paused and
his eyes twinkled briefly, “we wouldn’t be speaking right now.”
“Because what’s left of me would be coming
out of a jellyfish’s ass?”
Masozi retorted icily.
A grin slowly spread across Jericho’s face, “You prove my
point even better than I could, Investigator…which is why I’ll be giving you an
assignment before you disembark—one you may choose either to accept or not. I’m
not going to force you to do anything…that’s not how this works. If you decide
to
part company
with me at the earliest convenience,
I’ll respect that choice and promise not to pursue you.” A look of something
between resignation and frustration crossed his face as he added, “I’m getting
too old to go chasing after people who want, and genuinely deserve, to be left
alone.”
Masozi was uncertain if she should accept his words as
genuine, or just an attempt to manipulate her. He had already admitted that he
considered human psychology a simple matter to understand. In her mind, that
was the same as confessing to proficiency in wielding it as a weapon.
But the truth was she simply could not turn her back on what
he had shown her. If even a fraction of the information in the ‘Goat’ file had
been accurate then the Governor in question not only deserved to die—she
deserved to die as quickly as possible. The conspiracy outlined in the Goat file was unprecedented in the
history of the Chimera Sector
And while all of it—the bombing of her apartment building,
the fateful meeting with Chief Afolabi, and even the torrent of information
which had been thrown at her since arriving in Benton’s secret lair—may have
been nothing more than an elaborate attempt to manipulate her, she knew that in
the end she had no choice but to see how far the whole thing went.
“Fine,” she said tersely, “what did you have in mind?”
Jericho tilted his head toward the data pad. “Each of the
documents in the Goat file is cloned. One copy is the original, and the other
has had the figures, names, locations, and all other identifying information
scrambled so as to be unrecognizable at a glance,” he explained. “Transfer the
scrambled copies to individual slates and have their contents verified as
authentic by independent sources. The only authority required for validation is
a public notarial license, so a lawyer, accountant, magistrate, or any one of
three dozen other professionals will be able to do it for you for a modest,
flat, fee.”
“What will they be comparing the documents to?” she asked
warily. “If all the data is scrambled then how can they be verifying
anything
?”
“Every piece of evidence you’re holding,” he gestured to the
pad, “contains a series of alphanumeric markers. Those markers indicate the
chain of custody that the evidence has passed through on its way to the
assigned Adjuster,” he said with a short, meaningful look before continuing, “
all
they’re doing is verifying that the document has, in
fact, passed through the indicated chain. The evidence itself has already been
confirmed to the point of reasonable certainty.”
“You keep using that phrase,” she cut in, “you say
‘reasonable certainty,’ but that term isn’t a legally-recognized part of our
public legal system. A person is innocent until proven guilty in a court of
law.”
“Correction,” he said while holding up a finger, “a
private
citizen
is innocent until proven guilty under our Sector’s laws. All public
officials—including, in a limited capacity, one Investigator Masozi when she
became a fully-fledged officer of the law—forgo that particular right when it
comes to actions taken while in public office. Since a powerful bureaucrat
might be able to manipulate the legal system for his or her own benefit, they
must be held apart from it in these matters so as to minimize corruption.”
“But there are trials every year for corrupt officials,” she
argued. “Sentencing is carried out according to the same systems in place for
all other types of criminal proceedings.”
“Adjusters can’t always arrive at reasonable certainty when an
Adjustment is authorized,” he replied with a shrug. “In those cases, the courts
are often made aware of the collected evidence and it becomes the bureaucracy’s
problem.”
Masozi’s mouth fell open in momentary surprise, “Are you
saying that the cases which go public are just the T.E.’s leftovers?”
“Of course,” he replied dismissively. “Although to be fair,
there are times when the voters become so enamored with an official that they
don’t trigger an Adjustment.” He laced his fingers and pointed at the data pad
in her hands, “Which has been the case for our soon-to-be-late Governor friend
until quite recently.”
Masozi could fully understand the public backlash against
the Governor in question—a woman named Crissa Keno, who had been born
Christopher Keno, second son of the firmly-entrenched Keno family which had
ousted the previous regime of Governor Fernando Marquez amid a popular uprising
some thirty years ago. That uprising had ended when the T.E. performed an
Adjustment after finding sufficient evidence of corruption within Marquez’
regime,
and the Keno clan had functionally assumed control
over the small mining colony.
Christopher Keno had undergone gender reassignment in ‘his’
twenties—which was not an altogether unheard of procedure for the wealthy to
have—and the newly-corrected Crissa had promptly given birth to a pair of
children. Some ten years later, after becoming the colony’s media darling—often
dubbed the ‘Queen’ of all things media by her detractors, the majority of whom
were not residents of the colony over which she resided—Crissa began to compete
in the most violent forms of martial arts sanctioned throughout the Sector.
Most of her athletic accomplishments had been roundly celebrated by her
constituents as blazing a trail for gender-corrected individuals everywhere.
“I hope that the…unusual circumstances surrounding Ms.
Keno,” Masozi said slowly, “aren’t the cause for this requested Adjustment?”
Jericho snorted derisively. “’Unusual circumstances’ are irrelevant
to an Adjuster,” he said with a hard look which he held for several seconds
before continuing, “
the
potential corruption indicated
on that pad would easily outweigh my entire career’s accumulated Adjustment
value. This particular contract has been highly sought-after by every T.E.
Adjustor for that very purpose.”
Masozi suspected that she was supposed to ask what
‘accumulated Adjustment value’ meant, but she was sick of being spoon-fed
information. When she failed to make that particular query, an odd look flashed
over Jericho’s features before he stood abruptly from his cot.
“When we make dock, Benton and I will remain aboard the
Esmerelda
for three days,” he explained. “The ship will leave port on the fourth day, and
I’ll disembark at that time to take care of other business while you follow up
on the Keno paperwork. It should take you about a week if you stay on task, and
Benton will supply you with travel documents and enough credits for food,
lodging, and the notarial seals. So if you decide to turn us in, I’d advise you
to do it before then.”
Masozi very much doubted the two of them would wait much
longer than it took for her to leave eyesight before
egressing
the cargo vessel, but it wasn’t a point she cared to consider. She had already
decided to investigate Governor Keno and her unconventional rise to power
before deciding on a future course of action. “Fine,” she quipped, “but in case
you’ve forgotten, I
am
a wanted fugitive. By now my image and record
will have been disseminated to every public office from Presidential Security
down to local Pest Controllers. How do you propose I go about this ‘assignment’
when doing so will require me to walk past half the facial-recognition and
retinal-scanning systems in Aegis?!”
Jericho tilted his head toward Benton. “He’s got that part
covered; by the time you get on the streets, the locals won’t be looking for
you.”
Feeling anything but assured, she turned and made her way
back to her own cot with an impotent glare on her face.
She knew that to argue would only invite danger, so she kept
her mouth shut and took solace in the reality that if they had simply wished
her dead, they would have never made contact with her.
But Masozi could trust literally nothing else she had
learned about them to be true.
“Everything seems to be in order, Mrs. Washington,” the
Customs Officer said before handing the ident card back to Masozi, “welcome to
Aegis.”
“Thank you,” she replied perfunctorily, feeling a wave of
relief wash over her at not being recognized by the automated facial
recognition systems scattered throughout the port. As she walked past the
border security checkpoint and emerged on the coastal frontage road, she felt a
newfound respect for Benton and his information-manipulating skills.
He had supplied her with two thousand credits, which was
nearly as much as her starting Investigator’s monthly salary had been in New
Lincoln. She knew she would need to conserve those funds, though, since Aegis
was the second-most expensive city on Virgin.
Only the System Capitol of Onding’s Watch was a more
expensive place to live. The Capitol had been named after Commander Leonardo
Onding in memory of his last stand when, with the support of his two thousand
brave soldiers, he had held the then-central spaceport city of Black Harbor
against wave after wave of criminal elements bent on securing the world’s only
access point for themselves.
In the face of overwhelming odds and having run out of
options, Commander Onding overloaded a docked starship’s drive core and
incinerated the entire spaceport, taking the criminals with it. His heroic act
had given the populace of the planet sufficient time to gain some measure of
control over their individual communities which prevented a takeover from the
criminal forces.
Aegis had been born shortly thereafter. Originally little
more than the western oceanic transfer point between the two great continents
of
Virgin,
it was quickly repurposed into a spaceport.
Slowly but surely, the city had grown into a major hub of interstellar activity
and it was in no small part due to Aegis’ development that the eventual System
Capitol had been founded on Virgin—directly over the rubble of the old Black
Harbor spaceport.