Ure Infectus (Imperium Cicernus Book 4) Read online

  “Thank you, Eve,” he said perfunctorily.

  “Welcome, handsome,” she said with a wave. “Oh! I almost forgot,” she said as she smacked her virtual forehead with her palm. “Big Daddy Wladdy says…” she paused and took a cartoonishly deep breath. While she did, her face distorted grotesquely until it was a large, flat-topped, military-looking man’s with Benton’s voice which said, “Don’t forget the pasta, bro!”

  “Got it,” he said dryly as he gunned the bike’s motivators and merged into the growing morning traffic.

  Eve’s image shook its head vigorously, and the military-looking man’s features quickly reformed into her usual face. “Good hunting, gorgeous; just tell them I sent you!” she said in her usual, bubbly manner before disappearing from the helmet’s display.

  Much as the pixie-like program annoyed him, Jericho knew that Benton was the best hacker in the system—and very probably beyond—and he had apparently deemed Eve necessary to his continued operation. That meant Jericho had learned to tolerate her…despite her programmed obnoxiousness.

  Jericho stood before a rundown building on the far edge of town—an area very near to the city limits, and one which had all the telltale warning signs which most sane people obeyed by steering clear.

  While he despised the notion of entering the premises—even for the purpose of completing a mission—Jericho knew he had no choice in the matter. His arm had swollen to half again its original size, and he feared that he might be bleeding internally. If he didn’t get it looked at, and quickly, there was the very real danger of long-term damage to his arm’s nerves.

  So he knocked twice on the solid, sheet-metal door. A low-cost security camera swung over to look at him as its telescopic lens adjusted for a few seconds before apparently locking onto his image.

  “Who you?” a garbled voice asked through an intercom built into the doorjamb. “We no trouble; license good.”

  “I’m not an inspector,” Jericho said evenly as sweat began to roll down his cheeks. The pain in his arm was getting difficult to ignore, and he clenched his teeth as he fought to keep his voice steady as he said, “Eve sent me.” It wasn’t as though he actually believed that ‘Eve’ was anything more than a cleverly designed program which Benton used as a proxy to decrease his odds of capture, but ‘she’ had told him to inform the building’s denizens that she had directed him there.

  There was silence for several seconds until the door’s crude latch sprung open and the door swung slowly open.

  Needing no further encouragement, Jericho stepped inside and closed the door after he had done so, manually locking the latch as he did so. It was bright inside, almost painfully so, but he had expected such given the nature of the place.

  A foul stench wafted into his nostrils and he moved further into the building, knowing he had come to the right place after smelling the putrid odor. The bright light was generated by synthetic indoor lights which approximated a different band of light than Virgin’s primary put out, and that light was feeding the seemingly endless, slick film of dark, grey, fungus which covered every square millimeter of the building’s interior.

  A short, fat creature waddled into view and Jericho nodded his acknowledgment toward it, having expected to find precisely such a being. The alien was not even vaguely humanoid, possessing six, half-meter long, arachnid legs supporting a soft, meter long, egg-shaped, rubbery body which seemed wildly at odds with the chitinous legs beneath.

  Its species had no natural name of its own since they did not communicate via sound. Instead, its kind bore an alphanumeric of 154-HR-658-T, which served to catalog its system of origin with which Jericho—and likely the vast majority of humanity—was unfamiliar. Its species was among the more recognizable nonhuman aliens in the Chimera Sector, since their specialized biology was responsible for several organic alternatives to materials which were traditionally produced mechanically.

  In a uniquely human show of poor form coupled with dark humor, people had taken to calling them ‘Poppers’ since, when exposed to sources of heat which would generally be harmless to humans over short periods, they would loudly explode. They were subterranean and therefore did not have a set of traditional eyes, which was odd since even on their home world they had foraged out of their subterranean dens to eat. Their source of food on that distant world was the same fungus which now grew on the walls of the large, apparently abandoned, building.

  The creature’s front pair of legs turned upward as it reared up slightly, exposing a crude vocalizing unit which allowed the creature to ‘speak’—albeit crudely. “Permits good; we have receipt for food,” it began in protest, apparently still nervous of the possibility that Jericho was an inspector of some kind. Poppers were notorious—some would say undeservedly so—for digging up corpses and using them to feed their farmed fungus.

  Like most aliens in the Imperium, the Poppers were significantly less intelligent than humans—at least when using human-centric measures—but, unlike the supposed majority of their fellow aliens, the Poppers were at least intelligent enough to communicate meaningfully while generally abiding by human laws.

  “Eve sent me,” Jericho repeated. He had nothing against the Poppers—and did his best to never repeat their unfortunately widespread ‘name’ outside the confines of his mind—but he was on a schedule. He held out his left arm and peeled back the sleeve to reveal the swollen limb beneath.

  The Popper moved forward and the trio of mandibles ringing its triangular, toothless mouth clacked in anticipation. It moved to nearly within reach and then recoiled a step or two before reactivating its vocalizer, “Cracked endoskeleton…needs silk…Eve…we like Eve…we trust Eve…smells like Hadden…Hadden good to us…”

  To Jericho it sounded as though the creature was logically working its way through his story, probably trying to justify the risk of stepping closer to a human—even a wounded one. He did not begrudge the creature its hesitance, and did his best to stand quietly while the alien came to a conclusion.

  The Popper’s mandibles peeled back and it ‘said,’ “You break?”

  Jericho’s brow furrowed. “Yes…it’s broken,” he said slowly, hoping he had not wasted his time in coming to the creature’s putrid home.

  “No,” the Popper said as it deliberately lifted a leg and drew it through the film of fungus on the nearby wall, making a horrid, screeching sound as it did so, “you break—or we break?”

  Jericho finally understood what it meant. “I’ll do it,” he said as he took out the late Captain Sasaki’s tanto—a weapon which he had risked bringing with him through town, even though he had no license for it—and sat down cross-legged on the cleanest patch of floor he could find.

  The Popper moved forward and, as it did so, Jericho took a breath and made a small incision with the razor-sharp tip of the blade. He knew from experience that it would not hurt much initially, but it still surprised him to see blood well up from the fresh cut without a commensurate degree of pain. He cut a little deeper, and wider, for several seconds until the Popper clacked its mandibles.

  “Enough,” it said, and he set the tanto down on the floor before using his free hand to clamp his brachial artery and slow the blood flow to his now-opened arm.

  The Popper moved forward and delicately inserted the needle-sharp tips of its impressively steady, front legs into the ad hoc surgical wound. It then gently prized the margins apart, and as it did so the itching sensation Jericho felt on the wound itself was accompanied by a lance of dull, aching pain as the broken bone moved beneath the knot of swollen tissue surrounding it.

  “Pain,” the Popper said simply as it continued to open the wound, and Jericho took that to be the creature’s best attempt to provide some semblance of bedside manner. Thankfully, it was finished with exposing the ends of the bone fairly quickly, and Jericho watched with more than a small measure of interest as the Popper’s mouth began to work furiously.

  Its mandibles moved far more quickly than an ordinary
human could manage with any part of its body, and after a few seconds a thick, slimy wad of bubbly material appeared in the Popper’s mouth.

  It spat the wad into the wound, and the burning that accompanied it was enough to make Jericho wince in pain.

  “Pain,” the Popper said again, and Jericho couldn’t help himself but snicker softly in spite of the growing discomfort. Thankfully, just a few seconds later the pain in his arm had decreased significantly.

  The Popper drew the margins of the wound further apart, and Jericho concluded that the first wad of phlegmy substance had been an anesthetic—and a surprisingly powerful one, at that—in addition to, hopefully, having some powerful antibacterial properties.

  The broken bone of his forearm was clearly visible when the Popper had finished opening the wound, and it nimbly maneuvered the two pieces of cleanly broken bone together using its legs and pinning the arm against Jericho’s leg.

  “Pain,” the Popper said, and Jericho braced himself just in time to see the creature leaned forward and plunge its barbed mandibles into the wound. Amazingly, he never once saw the mandibles touch the edges of his wound as they deftly worked their way back and forth across the broken edges of bone.

  Not long after it had begun, the Popper pulled back and Jericho leaned down to see that the bone had indeed been knitted back together. A small, thin layer of silvery threads—thousands of them—had been woven around the broken bone, and Jericho knew that even that thin layer of material was far stronger than the bones which it secured.

  “Satisfactory?” the Popper asked neutrally as it hovered over the wound.

  Jericho nodded. He hadn’t needed a professional reconnect job—he could get that done later if need be—but he actually thought it was possible he wouldn’t need such a follow-up procedure. The Popper knew its craft better than he had suspected, so he shook his head. “Better than satisfactory,” he said, more than a little surprised to hear himself say it.

  “Pain,” the Popper said as it leaned forward and began to knit the edges of the surgical wound together using the same, fibrous, silvery material it excreted from the multi-purpose glands in its mouth.

  But that part of the procedure was easily the least painful, and after just a few minutes Jericho’s arm had been more or less repaired and sewn back together. There was a small, triangular patch over the wound made of the same silvery stuff the Popper had used to knit his bones together, but other than that it was impossible for Jericho to discern that he had just undergone surgery.

  “Go,” the Popper said before turning toward the wall it had scraped with its leg earlier and began to consume the material. Jericho tested his arm and found everything to be in satisfactory condition. While he knew it would take days for the swelling to go away entirely, at least it would no longer distract him.

  Jericho watched as the Popper scraped the fungus from the wall—a fungus which was based on something entirely different from DNA and would have died in the light of the Virgin primary, which was very different than that of its home world. He had a rare moment of contemplation as he wondered where the creature would have been at that moment had the Imperium not torn its ancestors from the world which should, of a right, have still been theirs.

  But he pushed the thought from his mind as he turned and left the building, knowing he had a job to do.

  “Leave philosophy to the philosophers,” he muttered after closing the door behind himself and making his way to the hover bike.

  Chapter IX: Three-for-Three…and Takeout

  Jericho set up in the apartment which his third New Lincoln operator had secured for him some months earlier. He made a manual inspection of all the gear and found everything to be in order, and he anticipated being finished with his third Adjustment of the day in less than another hour.

  He had attempted to contact Baxter at the designated time, but his number two operator had failed to reply to the missive. This set Jericho ill at ease; he knew that he was being pursued by agents who wished to prevent him from carrying out his duty but he had been careful—careful even for him, which spoke volumes of the importance of the trio Adjustments—in planning his New Lincoln trip.

  Jericho set up the large bore, single-shot, slug-thrower on its tripod and checked his lines of sight with the structure two buildings down and on the other side of the street. Using a weapon like the one he had selected for this particular Adjustment carried risks, but he preferred those risks to the alternatives.

  He checked the chronometer on his data link and saw that he still had twelve minutes before his target would enter the zone of engagement, so he decided to try contacting Baxter again. He initiated the connection and waited for the operator to accept the connection.

  But the seconds went by and Baxter never replied, so Jericho closed the connection and considered his options. No operator Jericho had worked with in the past decade had failed to follow the preset schedule—predictability was key in an Adjuster’s line of work—and Jericho was forced to conclude that someone had gotten to Baxter.

  The Timent Electorum Adjusters were limited in several ways, not the least of which being that the law afforded them no actual protection for their actions unless they managed to successfully execute an Adjustment and prove its legitimacy. But those whose actions supported an Adjuster—like Benton, Baxter, or his current mission’s operator, Shu—were afforded no such protection.

  Their contributions were made in spite of the risk in the pursuit of profit or, more usually, for less quantifiable reasons. Some—like Benton—seemed to enjoy ‘beating the man’ at his own game and others, like Baxter, had felt wronged by their government in the past and wanted to take some measure of revenge.

  But Shu was a mercenary, through and through, and Jericho would have used her more often if he hadn’t already had two incredibly capable operators in Benton and Baxter.

  Jericho activated his earpiece as he continued to consider whether he should attempt contacting Baxter directly. He needed to check in with Shu and see if there had been any new wrinkles.

  “Shu here,” the woman’s crisp voice replied as soon as the connection had been made. “Target is on the seventeen twenty high-rail; ETA seventeen minutes.”

  “Is he alone?” Jericho asked. This last Adjustment was of a significantly lower value than either of Cantwell or Angelo, which meant that collateral damage was expressly forbidden according to T.E. protocols. Some Adjusters were little better than marauders, kicking in the doors and laying waste to everyone inside whenever the mission permitted. Jericho preferred a cleaner, more concise approach.

  “Negative,” she replied, “he has a tail.”

  “A tail?” Jericho repeated in surprise as he opened his data link. “Send me the file.”

  Almost before he had finished asking for it, the file appeared in his messages and he quickly opened it and began to peruse the contents.

  There was a medium-short, square-jawed, clearly professionally-trained agent featured in seventeen still images. He always appeared in near proximity to Jericho’s last New Lincoln target, and that target was likely unaware of his dangerous shadow.

  “What have you got on him?” Jericho asked as he re-checked the sights on his stupendously overpowered rifle by flashing an infrared light briefly onto the window through which he would take his shot in fifteen minutes.

  “Nothing on file; facial recognition and partial retinal scans are coming back blank,” Shu replied promptly, confirmed one of his many suspicions. “He’s augmented—heavily, if the extra EM coming off him is any indication.”

  Jericho had suspected as much and was actually glad to hear her say it. Jericho had just engaged a knock-down, drag-out fight with a gene-hanced Southern Bloc captain—a relatively small woman, at that—and it had been a much closer affair than he would have liked.

  In his youth he might have thought it possible to take on an augmented agent like the one in Shu’s pictures, but age had given him more than just aches and pains. He was no
w wise enough to accept that there wasn’t a single chance in a thousand that he could take the agent in a straight-up fight.

  “Is the Adjustment still a ‘go’?” Shu asked with an unusual degree of tension in her voice.

  “Yes,” he replied as he came to grips with what fate had befallen Baxter—a fate that had almost certainly been decreed by the Agent following Jericho’s third target. “But we’ll need to go to tertiary escape routes; assume the others are compromised.”

  “Copy that,” Shu replied, and a brief pause ensued. “Tertiary route confirmed—repeat, tertiary escape route is open.”

  “Good,” he said, grateful for small favors. “I need you to place a trace on my link and do your best to find out whoever’s tapped the other end of the call I’m about to make. I don’t need you taking unnecessary risks, but if there is a trace then whoever placed it has already gotten to another of my operators today—and he was higher on my list than you are.”

  There was a tense silence before the operator said, “Understood; ready to run the trace as soon as you make the call.”

  “Get me a nearby video feed covering the Agent,” Jericho instructed as he tapped out a series of seemingly random numbers on his link, which he then called in a predetermined sequence. The process took nearly thirty seconds, and when he was finished a video feed opened up on his link’s screen.

  It was from a public transport carriage’s internal security cam, and it showed Jericho’s last target as well as the Agent who was shadowing him. Just a few seconds after the feed went live on his screen, the link showed an incoming call.

  Taking a short breath, Jericho connected the call and piped it through his earpiece.

  “It’s good to finally speak with you,” a man’s perfectly-pitched voice said, and the Agent’s lips moved in perfect unison with the words coming over the earpiece. “I don’t suppose I could persuade you to call this off?”

  “Nope,” Jericho replied simply.