Ure Infectus (Imperium Cicernus Book 4) Read online

  “Yes, sir,” the Tactical officer replied as yet another wave of blue-white fire rammed into the Kathryn Janeway, but this time the impacts tore huge, gaping holes in her hull. The Zhuge Liang’s Tier Two weapons grid appeared nearing exhaustion of its power supply, but with just three percent of its power remaining it ceased its fire as the Kathryn Janeway was torn apart in a shower of superheated metal amid a series of violent explosions which deformed the superstructure beneath her armored shell.

  The Tactical officer reported, “Three torpedo strikes, Captain; shields are at thirty four percent. Point defense registers five confirmed interceptions.” Masozi was alarmed to hear they had just sustained more ‘damage’ that they had during the rest of the short-lived battle combined—but she was even more alarmed that there had not been an accompanying shudder of the ship from those impacts like there had been at the battle’s outset. She concluded that the lack of tactile sensation must have been due to the engineer’s efforts at optimizing the ship’s gravity generators.

  The slowly-expanding cloud of intermittently-flashing debris that had moments earlier been the VSDF Destroyer Kathryn Janeway began to fall toward the gas giant. Only then did Masozi feel her fingers unconsciously release their death grip on the arms of her chair.

  “Helm: bring us about to assume an escort position for the 335/113 and 4.669 until they reach their Phase Thresholds,” Captain Charles ordered. “Tactical: confirm the Janeway is out of commission before sweeping the area for any other targets.”

  “Yes, sir,” the two bridge members replied in unison.

  After several seconds the Tactical officer reported, “The Janeway has ejected her life pods and all power signatures are confirmed dead. No other tactically-significant targets are within range of our sister ships, hostile or otherwise.”

  “Good,” Charles said before adding, “send a communique to the VSDF on their secure channels. Tell them they have wounded who require their assistance; Chambliss’ EM field might block the lifeboats’ emergency comm. beacons and slow a viable rescue operation.”

  “Yes sir,” an alien crewmember replied in a synthesized, distinctly feminine voice. ‘She’ appeared to be some sort of a cephalopod with a human-sized ‘head’ containing four eyes. The creature manned a circular station that appeared to have been built specifically for her species—a species with which Masozi was completely unfamiliar. After a few seconds, the creature’s vocalizer said, “Transmission sent and confirmed, Captain.”

  Captain Charles stood and nodded curtly. “There will be enough bloodshed in the days to come,” he said grimly before fixing his gaze on Jericho and then on Masozi. “Let’s get you two settled; if I understand the mission correctly, you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you.”

  Two days later, Masozi staggered out of the VR simulator and rubbed her aching eyes. She had just spent fourteen hours in flight training simulations—which was decidedly not how she had anticipated spending the trip to…wherever it was they were going.

  “You did good today,” Jericho said with the barest hint of approval, “you only killed us six times—a marked improvement over yesterday’s tally of twenty three.”

  “You’re already rated for this thing,” she jerked her thumb irritably over her shoulder toward the simulation booth. “Why do I need to train on it as well?”

  “Redundancy has a multiplicative effect in certain situations,” he replied casually, which had been almost the precise phraseology he had used in reply to her previous, similar, queries. “We have to be ready for everything, so we need to stay here and train until you’re rated to operate the Tyson in non-combat situations.”

  “But you said that time is a factor,” she argued. “Wouldn’t we be better served by getting down to the colony and making the Adjustment?” The more Masozi had read the file for Governor Keno, the more she had been convinced that the Adjustment was just as justified as—if not more so than—those of Mayor Cantwell and the other targets Jericho had ‘Adjusted’ back on Virgin. But she was keeping those reservations to herself—along with Director Hadden’s advice regarding Jericho’s trustworthiness—since she didn’t want to reveal any more of her thoughts than she needed to. Those words had replayed themselves over and over in her mind until she feared they might burst from her lips of their own accord.

  “The Governor’s not going anywhere just yet,” Jericho said far too calmly for her liking. “She’s surrounded by everything she’ll ever want; she’s got no reason to leave unless a higher power summons her.”

  “What are the news feeds saying about the fleet’s attack?” she asked.

  Jericho shook his head. “I don’t know, and frankly I don’t care. It’s all been filtered, manipulated, twisted, and censored so many times by the time it reaches the public that it’s doubtful there’s any real value in the news feeds’ end product—especially at a time like this.”

  He stretched his arms high above his head, and Masozi felt the irresistible urge to do likewise. After she had finished stretching, she shook out the numbness in her fingertips which had developed from being in a stationary position for so many hours.

  “We’ve got time, Investigator,” Jericho said calmly. “You should just focus on getting familiar with the Tyson’s systems.”

  Masozi bit her lip before saying, “I’m not an Investigator any more.” It was a realization she had come to several days earlier, but it had taken that much time to truly come to grips with what it meant. The person she had been—the only person she had ever wanted to be—was well and truly dead.

  Jericho waited for several seconds before replying, “That’s true. But if it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer to keep using the title.” He shrugged emphatically, “That’s how I’ve come to think of you.”

  Masozi had no idea how to respond to that, so she changed the subject, “I’m starving.”

  Jericho nodded, and they made their way to the mess hall where they plated up the some food that was decidedly less gourmet—but almost certainly just as healthy—as the contents of the platter which Director Hadden had provided in the Observation Deck of the now-destroyed H.E. One.

  They ate in silence as Masozi contemplated the destruction of Hadden’s headquarters, which had served as the nerve center for the Chimera Sector’s wealthiest and most influential corporation. Clearly the destruction of H.E. One had been by the Director’s design, and Jericho had suggested during their flight in the egg pod that one purpose of the explosion had been to make the event a public one. But she was unable to answer the same nagging question which had plagued her for two days: why?

  “You’ll work in the VR booth alone tomorrow,” Jericho said unexpectedly. “I’ve got some things to look into, and you’ll need solo experience in case I’m incapacitated.”

  Masozi nodded as though in agreement, but the truth was she had harbored growing doubts about her involvement in everything which had taken place since her arrival in Aegis. The flight from New Lincoln had made sense, since failing to do as Jericho and Benton had suggested would have likely result in her death.

  But she had never once considered that she might end up in the middle of a shooting war between the System Government and Hadden Enterprises. And in spite of the events of the past few days, Jericho seemed hell-bent on making his ‘Adjustment’ of Governor Keno with Masozi’s help.

  The more Masozi thought about it, the more likely it became in her mind that she needed to get off this proverbial ride as quickly as possible. For the time being, that meant playing along with Jericho’s plan…but she was convinced that it was in her own best interests—and potentially the best interests of the entire Sector—if she parted company with him as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

  “I’m going to go talk with Jeff,” Jericho said as he stood from his nearly-finished tray.

  “Who?” Masozi asked, her brow furrowed in confusion.

  Jericho snorted. “Captain Charles,” he elaborated, “we’ve…got history. It will be
good to catch up with him while I’ve got the chance. Feel free to head back to your quarters for some shut-eye; you’ll need it for your next round of VR simulations.”

  With that, he left the mess hall—or whatever they called it on a starship—and Masozi was finally free of his increasingly stress-inducing presence.

  She closed her eyes and ran through all the available data once again in her mind. After several minutes of silent contemplation, she was once again frustrated by the lack of absolute certainty regarding Jericho’s disposition toward her.

  He had genuinely taken risks in harboring her, and while his chosen occupation may be questionable—both legally and morally—Masozi had difficulty finding actual fault with him on those particular grounds. Her entire society had supported his actions and the actions of those like him, and while she held certain reservations about the Timent Electorum after an up-close-and-personal look at its machinations, she still believed in the idea of social balance.

  But she knew there was more to their situation than Jericho had explained; he had even told her as much! Factoring in Director Hadden’s ominous warning, Masozi had dearly wanted to decide Jericho was untrustworthy.

  Still, she was unable to condemn him based on conjecture, hearsay, or intuition. So she would not take action against him directly unless doing so became absolutely necessary to ensure her own safety.

  Above all, however, Masozi had resolved herself to break with her de facto captor as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

  She stood from the table and, after slotting her empty tray into the rack among the other similarly empty platters, Masozi made for her quarters. She could not quite remember where they were, but she did know they were one level down from her current location. So she made her way to the nearest lift and entered the commands necessary to take her to that level.

  Her eyes still ached so badly that she closed them to keep from the discomfort which the tube’s bright light caused. She was well-and-truly exhausted, but Masozi was more than slightly surprised to find she had nodded off during the short ride to deck three as she saw the empty corridor beyond the open doors of the lift. After giving herself a shake she exited the lift and began walking toward her assigned berth.

  But before she had reached it, she realized she was in the wrong place. Masozi looked around in confusion and saw that she was on deck six. She stopped and re-ran the sequence of her entering the lift, activating it, and the exiting, and was certain she had made the correct inputs necessary to take her to deck two.

  Rubbing her eyes in equal parts frustration and weariness, she turned toward the lift when a sound caught her attention from the far end of the corridor. She turned and cocked her head, listening intently for the sound to recur.

  It did, and she realized it was the muffled clang of metal on metal. She remembered that the shuttle bay, where she had disembarked the egg pod, was on deck six so she decided to go see what the commotion was about.

  As Masozi neared the shuttle bay’s doors—which were, for some reason, opened—she had the distinct impression that someone was watching her. She whirled around and thought she saw a flash of movement at a nearby corner of the corridor when she did so. Taking a trio of long, quick strides, Masozi burst around the corner hoping to find whoever it was that had been clandestinely following her.

  But the corridor was empty, and she narrowed her eyes in suspicion. After several moments of contemplation, she decided it was still worth investigating the shuttle bay for the source of the anomalous sound.

  The shuttle bay looked empty and the egg pod was nowhere to be found, but the craft which had retrieved it was. The Tyson—which was apparently the shortened version of the craft’s official name: Neil deGrasse Tyson, abbreviated as NdGT—was a sleek, powerful and, if she was being completely honest, sexy-looking vehicle with matte black armor and a thin, sliver-like forward-facing window in its cockpit.

  The craft was flown almost completely on instrumentation, which she supposed wasn’t that unusual for a spacecraft but seemed absolutely counterintuitive to Masozi’s planet-bound way of thinking.

  The loading ramp was open on the side of the craft and, after seeing no one present in the shuttle bay, Masozi decided to take a quick look inside the actual craft whose interior the VR simulations she had spent the last two days emulated.

  The interior of the craft was incredibly functional and streamlined. There was not a single wasted inch of surface area to be had, and the internal compartment was tiny—too tiny, in fact.

  The headroom looked appropriate for what she had come to expect from the simulations, but there was something about the right—or ‘starboard’ in naval terminology, as she had come to learn—side of the cabin which was off.

  Then she realized what it was. There was a small bench placed against the wall in the rear of the cabin, and Masozi decided to peek inside the cockpit to see if anything else was different than the simulations. After a thorough appraisal, she found the rest of the Tyson’s inner compartment to be precisely as it had been in the simulations.

  Confused, Masozi made her way to the back of the small cabin—which could possibly fit a mid-sized hover car, but nothing larger—and examined the bench. It appeared to be made of the same materials as the rest of the craft’s interior, and seemed to blend with everything else. But unlike everything else in the craft, she could not guess at its purpose.

  She knelt beside it and felt the edges with her fingertips, surprised to find it warmer than she had expected. Masozi felt a nearby panel and found it was cool to the touch, so she once again checked the tiny bench and confirmed that it was significantly warmer than the rest of the craft’s interior.

  After several minutes of examination, Masozi discovered a cleverly-concealed locking mechanism which required three points of the bench’s surfaces to be pressed simultaneously. She hesitated briefly, knowing there could be something dangerous inside, but her curiosity got the better of her and she depressed the three hidden buttons in unison.

  The top of the box-shaped bench popped up fractionally, and Masozi lifted the hidden lid to reveal a compartment that was lined with a thin, honeycomb-like material made of some strange mineral. But when her eyes fixed on the object inside the box, she gasped in spite of herself.

  Clearly emblazoned on the outside of the small, cylindrical device was a series of images which every school child learned to recognize and each one indicated something hazardous—but the most disturbing one was the symbol for ‘highly radioactive.’ Without touching the device, and fearing for her safety in the presence of a radioactive device of any kind, she briefly looked at the smaller markings and found them to be Southern Bloc lettering and pictographs.

  Masozi heard muted conversation from the corridor outside the shuttle bay, and she quickly closed the lid of the hidden compartment before exiting the shuttle. She had almost made it to the entry of the shuttle bay when a pair of human crewmembers—a man and a woman, who were clearly more interested in each other than they were in her—came around the corner where she herself had passed on her way to the shuttle bay.

  The two gave her a look of surprise and, thinking quickly, Masozi asked, “Where did the egg pod go?” She gestured over her shoulder and gave the two a look of confusion, “You don’t have another shuttle bay on this ship, do you?”

  The woman—a short, slightly-built red-haired girl who likely only weighed two thirds what Masozi did—shook her head. “The Zhuge Liang only has one shuttle bay, ma’am.”

  The man nodded and said, “But you really shouldn’t be down here without an escort. This is a restricted area.”

  “I’m sorry,” Masozi said with her best attempt at feigned guilt, “there was just something in the pod that I wanted to retrieve.”

  “Oh,” the woman said in understanding and sympathy, “I’m sorry, we ejected the pod not long after you two were brought on board. It really wasn’t worth bringing along.”

  “Of course,” Masozi said in agreem
ent, hoping to get away from the bay as soon as possible to avoid suspicion.

  “I’m going to have to log this,” the man said after a moment’s consideration, “how did you open the door, ma’am?”

  Masozi blinked in surprised. “It was open…I just assumed that meant it was ok to take a peek. I’m sorry if I was wrong…”

  “Hero,” the diminutive woman said while tugging on what appeared to be her boyfriend’s arm, “it was probably Klarpf—he’s always leaving doors open, right?”

  The man she referred to as ‘Hero’ rolled his eyes. “That’s true,” he said in agreement before casting a wary eye to Masozi, “but I still think this should be logged…”

  “I’ll do whatever you think is best,” Masozi assured him, hoping against hope he didn’t actually decide to log the event. Now, more than ever, Masozi wanted to get away from all of the insanity which had taken over her life for the past month and get back to something approaching normalcy—but that would almost certainly never happen if the ship’s crew discovered what she had learned about the Tyson’s cargo.

  Just then the same insectoid crewmember which Masozi remembered had opened the egg pod’s hatch came around the opposite corner of the corridor and stopped in what Masozi assumed was surprise.

  “Klarpf,” ‘Hero’ snapped as he gestured toward the shuttle bay, “did you leave these doors open?!”

  Klarpf looked back and forth between the doors and the human crewmembers before replying via his vocalizer, “Yes, Crewman Hero.”

  Hero sighed in frustration. “I’m going to have to write this up,” he grumbled, “and this is my watch; the Chief’s going to have my head!”

  “Hero,” the little woman said in a conciliatory tone, “you have to remember that Klarpf’s people don’t even have doors—they live in a communal, subterranean network of tunnels which connect every chamber to every other chamber. Remember Professor B’s xenopsychology: the entire concept of a door is a foreign concept in a hive mind, right?”