Sic Semper Tyrannis: The Chimera Adjustment, Book Two (Imperium Cicernus 5) Read online

  Sic Semper Tyrannis – Book Two of Imperium Cicernus: The Chimera Adjustment

  by

  Caleb Wachter

  Copyright © 2015 by Caleb Wachter

  All rights reserved.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental. Respect my electronic rights because the money you save today will be the book I can't afford to write for you tomorrow.

  Imperium Cicernus: The Chimera Adjustment

  Ure Infectus

  Sic Semper Tyrannis

  Other Imperium Cicernus Novels

  On The Imperium’s Secret Service, by Chris Nuttall

  Death to The Imperium, by James McGovern/James Thorpe

  Rebels and Patriots, A.G. Claymore

  Beyond the Rim, A.G. Claymore

  Other Books by Caleb Wachter

  As of 08-09-2015

  SPINEWARD SECTORS: MIDDLETON’S PRIDE

  No Middle Ground

  Up The Middle

  Against The Middle

  SPINEWARD SECTORS: TRACTO TALES

  The Forge of Men

  SPHEREWORLD NOVEL SERIES

  Joined at the Hilt: Union

  SPHEREWORLD NOVELLAS

  Between White and Grey

  SEEDS OF HUMANITY: THE COBALT HERESY SERIES

  Revelation

  Reunion

  COLLABORATIVE WORKS BY LUKE SKY WACHTER & CALEB WACHTER

  SPINEWARD SECTORS NOVELLAS

  Admiral’s Lady: Eyes of Ice, Heart of Fire

  Admiral’s Lady: Ashes for Ashes, Blood for Blood

  Books by my Brother: Luke Sky Wachter

  SPINEWARD SECTORS NOVEL SERIES

  Admiral Who?

  Admiral’s Gambit

  Admiral’s Tribulation

  Admiral’s Trial

  Admiral’s Revenge

  Admiral’s Spine

  Admiral Invincible

  Admiral’s Challenge

  RISE OF THE WITCH GUARD NOVEL SERIES

  The Blooding

  The Painting

  RISE OF THE WITCH GUARD NOVELLAS

  The Boar Knife

  Follow this series at the Imperium Cicernus Facebook Group

  Join www.PacificCrestPublishing.com to gain access to future beta reading opportunities and other goodies!

  .

  Table of Contents

  Prologue: A Clarion Call – excerpted from the bridging novella, Guarding an Angel

  Chapter I: Setting a Course

  Chapter II: A Sparring Session

  Chapter III: History Lessons & A Cry For Help

  Chapter IV: A Flightless Hawk

  Chapter V: A Division of Labor

  Chapter VI: A Meeting of Minds

  Chapter VII: A Painless Breakup

  Chapter VIII: An Attitude Adjustment

  Chapter IX: A Not-So-Nice Trip

  Chapter X: Genocide Is Never Gentle

  Chapter XI: Mercy vs. Duty

  Chapter XII: The Cavalry

  Chapter XIII: A Two-fer?

  Chapter XIV: Three and Out

  Chapter XV: Making a Stand

  Chapter XVI: An Interrogation and Submersion

  Chapter XVII: An Investigation

  Chapter XVIII: The Fourth Stop

  Chapter XIX: The Great Escape

  Chapter XX: Free Will

  Chapter XXI: The Second Tribunal

  Chapter XXII: The Talking Head

  Chapter XXIII: The Plan

  Chapter XXIV: A Deafening Silence

  Chapter XXV: Preparation —> Separation

  Chapter XXVI: A Quiet Ride

  Chapter XXVII: Gaining Position

  Chapter XXVIII: Gambit Accepted

  Chapter XXIX: Sic Semper Tyrannis

  Chapter XXX: The Fledgling Phoenix

  Chapter XXXI: What…The…FUCK!?

  Chapter XXXII: Bumps in the Road

  Chapter XXXIII: A Confession

  Afterword

  Prologue: A Clarion Call – excerpted from the bridging novella, Guarding an Angel

  “Bottom line, Doctor?” Jericho insisted after yet another digression into medical jargon with which he hoped to die having never become familiar.

  “Your left arm was too badly damaged,” Maturin replied before Doctor Kowalski could do so, “if you allow us to graft new nerve tissue over the next four months we can mitigate some of the losses, but even without your recent excursion there simply wasn’t enough left of what was there to provide for a full recovery.”

  “Will I lose it?” Jericho asked evenly. He had been more than slightly impressed when the duo of surgeons had successfully re-built and replaced his limb, having assumed his arm was gone permanently.

  “No,” Dr. Kowalski cut in, slicing a harsh look over at Dr. Maturin, “but you’ll never regain full functionality, and the ring finger’s sensation will never recover either.”

  “Ballpark estimate,” Jericho said, leaning back in his chair and drumming the fingers of his left hand slowly against the chair’s armrest, an act which took all of his concentration to continue with anything remotely resembling rhythm, “how much usage will I get out of it?”

  “You’re right-handed,” Kowalski began in an insufferably encouraging tone that made Jericho roll his eyes, “so the impact to your daily living will be minimal—“

  “It will probably end up about half of what it was,” Maturin interrupted, fixing Jericho with his steely blue eyes. “There will be significant muscular atrophy, poor coordination of digits three through five, and the potential for random, mostly subtle, spasms of everything from the elbow down. You won’t be able to shoot with it reliably, and even forming a fist for a punch will be a dicey proposition without hand-wear designed to facilitate the correct posture of the extremity.”

  Jericho had experienced spasms a handful of times in recent days, and had feared they heralded something degenerative. But his sensation, while still sketchy, was certainly good enough for him to work with. He held Dr. Maturin’s gaze as Dr. Kowalski shook her head, suppressing a snort as she did so.

  “And nerve grafts are a long, drawn-out procedure, yes?” Jericho asked, first of Maturin and then looking pointedly over at Dr. Kowalski.

  “Three months at a minimum,” Maturin replied promptly, “but in cases like yours, we’re realistically looking at more like seven or eight months of weekly grafts and growth stimulation therapy—therapy to be undertaken twice weekly.”

  “During which time I would have no use of the limb?” Jericho reiterated.

  “Not no use,” Dr. Kowalski said sharply, “but strenuous activity of any kind would destroy whatever progress we would have made. And once a nerve is opened for grafting, interruption of the process causes permanent nerve ablation in over eighty percent of cases.”

  “So my choices are,” Jericho said, drawing in a breath, “to take what I’ve got and learn to work with it, or sit on the sidelines for the better part of a year. That’s what I needed to know,” he said with a gracious nod. “I can’t sit by hoping to recover full use of my arm, but I appreciate your professional input. What kind of physical therapy regimen should I undertake to maintain maximum possible use of what I have left?”

  Dr. Maturin slid a data pad across the table and shrugged. “It’s nothing overly strenuous, but re-training the limb will take several weeks before you hit your peak efficiency. We have implants—“

  “No implants,” Jericho repeated for what must have been the fifth time during the meeting. “Organic soluti
ons only; I’ve made a career out of exploiting people’s overreliance on technology. I won’t fall victim to the same weakness.”

  Just then, Jericho’s data link chimed. He flipped it on to see he had an incoming connection request from Captain Charles. He activated it and saw his cousin’s face on the screen.

  “Jeff?” Jericho asked, but before his cousin could reply he had already guessed what the Captain of the Zhuge Liang meant to tell him.

  “Switch to Virgin Public Broadcast,” Captain Jeffrey Charles said grimly. “It’s happening.”

  “Thanks,” Jericho said evenly, and before he could tell them to do so, one of the doctors had activated the small office’s primary viewer. The screen sprang to life with the VPB logo in the lower, right-hand corner. Featured at the center of the display was the familiar image of Virgin System’s President Han-Ramil Blanco, proudly wearing his distinctive headwear.

  “The images we’ve seen of the massacre at Philippa are nothing short of horrific,” President Blanco said, his stately veneer proudly wearing a look of stern resolution over his dark, angular features. “One thing is now clear to each and every one of us: Hadden Enterprises, its many subsidiaries, and several other interstellar corporate conglomerates have declared war upon the people of Virgin System—and, by extension, the rest of the Sector’s citizenry. Corporations like Hadden have abused the rule of law for far too long and, as a result, their power has gone unchecked to the point where such a tragedy was not only possible, but actually occurred.”

  The room in which Jericho sat was silent as they watched a video clip of the Zhuge Liang—a video which had apparently been taken from a ground-based pickup on Philippa—replace President Blanco’s features. Just a few seconds after the warship had appeared it was shown firing its antimatter torpedoes into the atmosphere over Philippa’s primary city, Abaca.

  There was an audible gasp throughout the press conference room when the torpedoes exploded, igniting Philippa’s volatile atmosphere as they did so. The President’s features, schooled into a look of grim resolution, returned to the image. “These corporations wield undue power throughout the Sector, due to their manipulation of our most fundamental laws. I am joined by several other System Presidents in expressing our categorical desire to see justice done for this, and other, crimes against sentience—including, we have learned in recent days, the wholesale enslavement of millions of alien individuals by these same corporations. This previously undocumented labor pool’s activities have played havoc with our economic system, and I will see to it that these aliens are remunerated fairly for their efforts before I step down from this office. The beneficiaries of this slavery have been none other than the same corporations who so callously opened fire on a colony which, until only recently, had enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship with Hadden Enterprises.”

  “Bastards,” Jericho heard Dr. Maturin seethe, and he turned to see the other man’s fists clenched white-knuckle tight before himself as he kept his eyes fixed on the screen.

  “Moreover,” Blanco continued, “the foundational principle of our Sector’s society has come under fire from these same elements. The right of the citizenry to sanction its leaders is the First Right of our great society, and it is a right which must be cherished and respected…” he trailed off, sweeping the room with his nearly black eyes, “but we now have evidence to suggest that the Timent Electorum agency itself has been unduly influenced by the corporations. Entities like Hadden Enterprises have manipulated these noble defenders of our most sacred rights—often without the Adjusters’ knowledge—and we now believe that centuries-old agency no longer fills the essential role it once did.” Blanco leaned across the podium, the impressive breadth of his body becoming apparent as he did so, “I am therefore instructing all Adjusters throughout the Chimera Sector to temporarily cease and desist in their activities until the damage done to their august order can be assessed and corrected. With the universe’s blessing, that damage will be repaired so they may continue to carry out their sacred duty on behalf of us all, wrapped in the same cloak of transparency which pervades every other aspect of our great society!”

  There was a loud cheer, followed by a cacophony of applause as the entire room stood to applaud him, and Jericho could not help but smirk contemptuously at the sight of people applauding the absolution of their most fundamental civil liberty.

  He knew that the Adjusters of the Chimera Sector would never follow the unilateral edict of President Blanco—or any other official, regardless of their relative power—but Jericho also knew that the President was fully aware of that fact. Blanco was all but inviting assassination attempts, as he had just publicly declared the First Right of the Chimera Sector’s body politic to be under his office’s direct jurisdiction—an absolute impossibility according to the Sector’s Bill of Rights.

  The President schooled his features as he stood to his full, imposing, height, “Now, therefore, I, Han-Ramil Blanco, President of the Virgin System, by virtue of the power in me vested by the laws which every loyal Chimera citizen holds dear, have thought fit to call forth our honorable military defenders, and hereby do call upon the loyal populace of this System to support their efforts, in order to suppress said corporations, and to cause those same laws for which we have all bled, suffered, and died, to be duly executed as they were truly intended.”

  Jericho felt a knot form in the pit of his stomach as he heard the statement for what it truly was. It was a declaration of war, but not against corporations. Blanco—apparently with the support of several other System leaders—was attempting to restructure the Sector’s government from the ground up, and the people whose lives would be most affected were those with the least power. The corporations would survive in some form or another, but the liberties which the citizens of Chimera Sector had enjoyed were now under direct fire from a man with the podium, charisma, and opportunity to undo everything which had given those citizens life after the wormhole collapse.

  “I appeal to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate and aid this effort,” Blanco continued as the applause nearly drowned out his powerful voice, “to maintain the honor, the integrity, and the existence of our System and, indeed, our Sector entire, and the perpetuity of the popular government which saw us cast off the yoke of Imperial tyranny; and to redress wrongs already long enough endured.”

  The feed then panned back as President Blanco stepped away from the podium to face a group of military officials. There were at least a dozen of them and, judging from their insignia, they appeared to be ranked Generals or Admirals to the last. They took turns shaking hands with the towering Blanco as the video feed split the screen in two images side by side.

  In addition to the President shaking the hands of his war cabinet, the view also included the assembled throng of reporters—which had literally packed an auditorium generally reserved for major policy announcements—applauding as loudly as they were able. Tears streamed down the faces of several members of the crowd, but each droplet of moisture was one born of joy rather than despair.

  The feed went dark, and Jericho realized Dr. Maturin had deactivated the display with trembling hands which were no longer white with tension. The man’s face had turned as red as an engine exhaust manifold and he stormed out of the room without another word, leaving Jericho and Dr. Kowalski alone.

  Jericho wanted to contact Masozi, but she had been quite specific in her desire not to interact with him until after her surgery, and immediate recovery from said surgery, had been completed.

  So he stood from his chair and Dr. Kowalski did likewise before saying in a tight voice, “I hope you kill that man.”

  Jericho stopped and gave the woman a quizzical look. “That’s a strange thing to hear a doctor say,” he said levelly.

  “I got into medicine to fight disease, and any good physician understands what disease really is,” she said as she raised a finger to point at the now darkened screen. “That man is a cancer unlike anything our Sector has s
een; I just wish I had the right scalpel for the job…because I’d use it to cut him out right now if I could.”

  Jericho couldn’t help but snicker as his data link lit up, showing an incoming call from Masozi. “Doctor,” he said as he activated the link and accepted the incoming call, “that scalpel is standing right in front of you.”

  She nodded curtly as Jericho saw Masozi’s features appear on the screen of his wrist-mounted data link.

  “All right, you smug son of a bitch,” the dark-skinned woman said, and in that moment the familial resemblance between herself and President Blanco was striking, “let’s kill that piece of shit.”

  For reasons he was unable to comprehend in that moment, Jericho felt a wave of relief wash over him. He nodded slowly and said, “Glad to have you onboard, Masozi.”

  “That’s ‘Adjuster’ to you,” she spat before severing the link and, while her rebuke pained him in ways he hadn’t expected, he knew he deserved every bit of it—and then some.

  Still, he did need to explain to her that she wasn’t a fully-fledged Adjuster just yet…but that could come later. And in light of Jericho’s recent discovery regarding his left arm’s diminished utility, he was doubly grateful to have Masozi on his side.

  Even if they weren’t on a first name basis.

  Chapter I: Setting a Course

  As soon as S.R. Hadden’s secretary—and highly-trusted legal counsel—Ms. Schmidt left Captain Jeff Charles’ ready room, Jericho moved past her while making brief eye contact and stepped through the door before it even closed behind her.