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

  “You have your own orders, I assume?” Jericho asked as he settled into the chair opposite his cousin’s. Jericho winced as his ruined arm spasmed of its own accord, causing an unusual, deep pain to fill the limb for several seconds before dissipating.

  “I do,” Jeff grudged, “though I’m more offended by their delivery than by their content.”

  Jericho breathed a short sigh of relief. “Glad to hear we’re of the same mind on that particular count.”

  “So,” Jeff mused, shaking his head in bewilderment, “let me see if I’ve got this straight: I retain operational command over the Zhuge Liang’s actions, but overall directives have to be issued by you and confirmed by Investigator Masozi? How exactly is that supposed to work?” he scoffed. “A warship can’t be run by committee.”

  “We’re just going to have to feel our way around it,” Jericho said with a shrug. “I never anticipated anything like this, and I can assure you neither did the new Adjuster.”

  “Ah,” Jeff quipped, “that—how exactly will that work, anyway? I mean, if she’s an Adjuster just like you, doesn’t that mean that you’re her boss?”

  Jericho shook his head, “It’s not like that. Once she’s confirmed, we’re more or less equals—in fact, given that she’s the Adjuster of record for the Keno Adjustment, if anything she’s got a major advantage on me in terms of Redeemed Lives.”

  Jeff rolled his eyes. “The more I hear about your organization, the less organized I find it to be,” he said with a wistful sigh. “I prefer things simple: there’s the bad guys, go kill them.”

  “We all prefer things to be black and white,” Jericho retorted easily. “But the higher up we go in life, the more everything turns grey.”

  Jeff eyed him skeptically before slowly nodding, “Looks like the Director had us figured pretty much perfectly. It seems I lack the very moral flexibility that you appear to have in abundance,” he said and though his words were pointed, his tone was anything but. “But how does Masozi figure into all of this, aside from her family ties to President Blanco?”

  Jericho cocked his head, having pondered the same thing in the half hour since he, himself, had received Director Hadden’s final directive. “I’m still trying to figure that out, at least from Hadden’s perspective, but from my own I can say that she might prove instrumental to bringing that tyrant down once and for all.”

  “Including Abaca,” Captain Charles’ brow lowered darkly, “Blanco’s been responsible for over a million civilian deaths in the last three years. Most of it has been more or less supported by the Virgin media as reasonable, but if they knew the truth about Abaca—“

  “He was always going to get to frame Abaca on his terms,” Jericho interrupted pointedly. “Without irrefutable evidence, we can’t go public with our suspicions of his involvement.”

  “Suspicions?!” Jeff blurted. “The Alexander just happened to be in the area, did it? That ship hasn’t left orbit of Virgin Prime but three times in the last two years.”

  “It’s all circumstantial evidence,” Jericho shook his head sourly. “We have to gather more information before making our move in the court of public opinion.”

  “I wish you were wrong,” Captain Charles grumbled, “but you’re not. Even if every single piece of hardware that wasn’t already under his control lined up with us, the best we could hope for is a coin flip. Which I guess brings me to another question: what exactly is your plan for rallying the other corporations and Star Systems to our cause?”

  “In truth,” Jericho admitted, “the main issue ahead of us is getting approval for the Blanco Adjustment. I have no idea how we’re supposed to win a war of public opinion with one of the most influential, charismatic politicians in the history of the Chimera Sector.”

  “Well,” Jeff said with apparent resignation as he leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers over his belly, “have you figured out our next stop, at least?”

  Jericho nodded, knowing precisely where they needed to go, “The Manticore System.”

  “Can you hear me, Masozi?” she heard a man’s voice ask, and her eyes rolled around dreamily for several seconds before settling on the face of an unfamiliar doctor. She blinked in confusion for a few seconds before recognizing who he was.

  “Doctor Maturin?” she asked drowsily, feeling as though every part of her was filled with helium and slowly rising from the medical bed.

  “Good,” he said with a nod, pulling down his surgical mask and saying, “do you know where you are?”

  “The…the Zhuge Liang,” she said, shaking her head to try clearing it of the oddly persistent mind fog as she looked around her surroundings, “I’m in the Zhuge Liang’s surgical suite.”

  “Good, good,” he said with an approving nod, “and do you remember our conversation before we began the procedure?”

  She nodded as bits and pieces of it came back to her. “My leg,” she said numbly, immediately looking down and seeing that her lower half was covered with a plain, white sheet. “It was gone.”

  “It still is,” the doctor said patiently, “but the operation to integrate your new prosthetic was just completed. You won’t feel anything in your new limb for a few days, since the nerve blocks we employed will take some time to wear off, but I wanted to have Doctor Kowalski assess your neurological functions before we take you to recovery. It’s possible we’ll need to resume surgery if there was unforeseen damage to your pelvis’ nerves, and if you’re feeling up to it now would be the best time to perform that examination.”

  Masozi nodded shortly, equally excited and concerned about their having completed the traumatic procedure and were now going to check for collateral damage.

  “Doctor Kowalski,” Doctor Maturin beckoned, stepping back from the bed as the Zhuge Liang’s Chief Medical Officer moved forward with a small, slender device.

  “Hello, Masozi,” the woman in the surgical gown and cap said, “do you remember me?”

  “Of course,” Masozi replied tersely, wishing they would just get on with it.

  “I’m going to check your nerves below your pelvis for sensitivity to gentle, electrical stimulation while gauging your tactile senses,” Doctor Kowalski explained. “I’d like you to close your eyes and relax; just tell me when you feel anything below the belt, and tell me where you feel it.”

  Masozi nodded and closed her eyes, her heartbeat quickening in anticipation as the Doctor lifted the sheet from her legs and placed the probe against her right knee. It caused a warm, tickly sensation at once, and Masozi said, “That’s my right knee.”

  “Good,” Doctor Kowalski said, and a moment later Masozi felt another warm, almost itchy sensation midway up her thigh.

  “Inner right thigh,” Masozi said.

  “Good,” the Doctor repeated, and then the sensation moved to her inner groin.

  “Right groin,” Masozi said tightly, having never enjoyed her pelvic examinations and getting the distinct impression that was the direction this particular examination was heading.

  “I apologize for the intrusion,” Doctor Kowalski said, “that’s as far as I have to go.”

  The sensation mirrored on the other side of her groin, and after another dozen or so tests of the area around her left leg, Doctor Kowalski stood with a satisfied look on her face.

  “I see no collateral nerve involvement,” she declared.

  “Excellent,” Doctor Maturin said with satisfaction as he turned to face Masozi once again—he had kept his back to the series of tests which Doctor Kowalski had performed—and he gave Masozi a mischievous smile as he said, “Would you like to see your new leg?”

  Masozi’s discomfort of the previous minutes vanished as she nodded eagerly. She had already come to grips with the loss of her leg after the events on Philippa, and she felt strangely excited about the prospect of acquiring a replacement—especially one of her chosen prosthetic’s caliber.

  Doctor Maturin seemed to genuinely share at least a significant portion of her exci
tement, as he carefully withdrew the sheet from her lower half to reveal a leg which, at first glance, appeared very nearly identical to the one she had lost to the auto-corrosive nerve agent.

  “That’s amazing,” she breathed as she leaned forward to inspect it more closely. Every detail was perfectly re-created—right down to a birthmark on her inner thigh, and a handful of scars she had earned during her amateur kickboxing days while tempering her shins against wooden practice dummies.

  “We tried to recreate the aesthetics,” Doctor Kowalski explained, “by using the photographic models created during your examination on H.E. One.”

  She leaned down to touch her new leg and Doctor Kowalski quickly reached out to stop her. But Doctor Kowalski’s hand was intercepted by her counterpart, Doctor Maturin. “It’s my professional opinion that she can handle it, Doctor,” he said with calm certainty.

  “Handle what?” Masozi asked, looking between the two of them in concern.

  Doctor Kowalski shot her male counterpart a cold look before replying, “The nerve grafts are not yet complete. You won’t feel anything; in thirty percent of cases depression follows the first realization that, while it looks correct, it is not the leg you lost.”

  “It’s my professional opinion, however,” Doctor Maturin cut in, “based in no small part on my conversations with Jericho—the foremost authority on psychology aboard this vessel—that she will not be counted among that particular statistic.”

  Seeming to ignore him, Doctor Kowalski continued, “It’s not just that the leg won’t have any sensation of its own for several days, but the fact that while it looks similar to your old leg, it will not feel the same to your fingers.”

  Masozi nodded slowly as she processed their differing opinions on the matter. “I appreciate the concern, Doctor Kowalski,” she said, “but I think that the sooner I come to grips with the reality of my situation, the faster I can learn to deal with it in a healthy fashion.”

  Doctor Maturin’s face took on a triumphant look, while Doctor Kowalski scowled, and Masozi leaned down to touch the skin of her new, prosthetic leg.

  Her leg’s sensory nerves did not register the caress of her fingers, but her fingers felt her own skin beneath them and she breathed a sigh of relief at the sensation. When she pressed with her fingers, however, it was clear that while the dimensions were apparently identical to those of her old leg, this new leg was harder, heavier, and colder—at least, it was colder at that particular moment. There was no soft, squishy layer of tissue beneath the skin, and she felt her remaining original leg to compare the sensations.

  After a few moments of gawking at the new limb, she gathered her wits and nodded her thanks to the doctors. “I…I suppose I didn’t live without a limb for long enough to truly appreciate your efforts,” she said, fixing them both with gracious looks, “but I do understand that, under any other circumstances, I would not have been afforded such skilled care. Thank you—to both of you.”

  The doctors nodded before wheeling her out of the surgical suite toward the general sickbay. “The nerve integration sequence will take a few days,” Doctor Maturin explained, “but after that you should regain most, if not all, of your sensation—though there will be mostly subtle differences between your new senses in the limb and your old ones. After that, you can begin a regimen of physical exercises which, more than anything, will help you acclimate to your newer, heavier, stronger, and faster leg.”

  “I can’t wait,” Masozi said, feeling a flash of excitement fill her eyes as she leaned back in the bed.

  Chapter II: A Sparring Session

  Masozi leapt in with a flurry of attacks, some high punches mixed with some low kicks and finished by a high kick with her left leg. Jericho blocked all of her attacks expertly, save for the two kicks from her new, mechanical left leg. Those attacks he dodged by stepping out of range and then ducking beneath.

  “Too predictable,” he growled, filling Masozi with a surge of anger as she pressed forward, determined to land a meaningful blow against the manipulative old bastard. But before she could follow up, he turned the tables on her by stepping around her left side and snapping a trio of left jabs into her jaw. None struck with enough power to daze or stun her, but each kept her body relatively motionless as she tried to slip her head out of each punch’s path.

  Then, before she had realized he was doing it, Jericho leapt forward and planted a knee into her solar plexus while clotheslining her with his left arm. She managed to fight off the arm while staggering backward, but Jericho lashed out with his right foot and hooked her ankle just enough that she tripped and fell to the floor of the Zhuge Liang’s gym.

  “Again,” Jericho instructed, his bare, sweaty chest heaving up and down with practiced control as he beckoned for her to stand.

  Masozi felt the urge to scream in frustration at having been bested by the grey-haired, but superbly well-conditioned man—who was somewhere between fifteen and twenty five years her elder—but she kept her tongue pressed against the back of her teeth as she regained her footing. They had been going at it for over an hour, and if appearances were any indication then he was in even better shape than she was.

  “Nice trip,” she grudged as she shifted her weight back and forth between the balls of her feet.

  “It did the trick,” he shrugged. “When you’ve fought as much as I have, the way a victory looks is a lot less important than just getting the job done and getting out in one piece.”

  “Just like an Adjustment?” she scowled, knowing he was taking the opportunity to patronize her with yet another in a series of lessons he apparently thought were important for her to learn.

  “Just like anything, Adjuster,” Jericho retorted evenly as he took a dry towel and wiped the sweat from his long, muscular arms before doing likewise on his flat-topped, vertical-standing hair which looked like something which a drill sergeant from a bad military vid would sport. “That new leg gives you an incredible edge over me in a match like this,” he said, gesturing to her new, almost completely mechanical leg, “but so far you seem determined to only capitalize on its durability when you could be using it for so much more.”

  “What are you talking about?” she snapped.

  Jericho sighed, nearly rolling his grey-blue eyes in exasperation as he stretched his left shoulder by pin-wheeling his arm slowly, alternating between clockwise and counterclockwise motion. “I thought that a week of sparring would have taught you, but I appear to have been mistaken.” When he was finished rolling his shoulder around, he gestured to his own left leg as he planted it behind himself in a left-handed stance—a stance which mirrored Masozi’s own with alarming detail. “My left leg and right leg weigh almost an identical amount,” he explained before snapping a swift, precise front kick toward her face.

  She slipped her head to the side instinctively, but there had been no need since he held up the attack before shifting his weight and repeating the attack with his right leg.

  “As such,” he continued clinically, “I don’t suffer any disadvantages from using either my left or my right; it’s just a matter of timing, relative position, and whether or not I’ve trained sufficiently with both legs that determines the efficacy of my kicks. But you,” he gestured to her left leg, “have one leg that weighs almost ten kilos more than the other, and while the heavier leg is many times faster and more powerful than its home-grown mate, if you use it to kick then you’re sacrificing its primary advantage: drive force.”

  Masozi’s eyes narrowed as she failed to see his point, but she decided to keep from overtly antagonizing him as she considered what he was saying. “So…what you’re saying is I shouldn’t kick with it?”

  Jericho shook his head patiently. “I’m just saying that you shouldn’t make it so obvious that you’re setting up left kicks with just about every combination. If I had that leg,” he explained, once again adopting a stance which perfectly mirrored her own, “I’d use it to power my punches and right kicks, only using it as
a primary weapon if the situation was perfect.”

  Masozi realized he was probably right. Her new leg, being significantly heavier than the original, was more difficult to bring into a fight to deliver kicks than its counterpart. She had already performed several tests of the limb, under the guidance of Dr. Maturin, and had been nothing short of amazed to find its raw strength. Doing one-legged squats, she could lift over a thousand pounds with that leg alone—an unthinkable amount which had required several days for her to come to grips with.

  It was also markedly faster than her other, original leg, whereas its responsiveness had become so good that she only occasionally remembered it was an artificial leg.

  Of course, the leg had its own onboard computer which attenuated the signals it transmitted to her ‘home-grown’ neurophysiology. If that computer went offline for any reason whatsoever she would be left with a leg that was not only heavier than its counterpart, but only possessed roughly half the strength of its opposite.

  The doctors aboard the Zhuge Liang had done incredible work, even going so far as to cultivate and grow new musculature from what little remained of her old leg. Those muscles had been integrated into the prosthetic, augmented limb to provide her with direct neural control over the leg’s actions just as though it was the real thing. The mechanical musculature—or whatever it was called—simply enhanced what her organic muscles and nerves directed them to do, so in many ways it really was almost identical to her old leg.

  “Ok,” she said tersely, “we’ll try it your way. But if you let me hit you just to prove a point—“

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Jericho assured her, and she grudgingly had to admit that ever since he had returned from the alarmingly dangerous mission to retrieve Eve’s ‘fiddly bits’ from her old home, Jericho had not once lied to her as far as she could tell. He had, since that time, answered every question Masozi had asked—often in far greater detail than she would have preferred.