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

  “Lovely place,” she muttered as she caught a whiff of an odor bearing strikingly fecal undertones. The short tunnel which joined the Tyson’s docking ring to the larger arm—which had a dozen similar docking collars to the one which their shuttle was now moored—turned to the right and merged into a long, considerably wider, corridor which appeared only fractionally better maintained than the first passage had been.

  “It’s easy to see a thing’s flaws,” Jericho said in that insufferably condescending tone of his, “but Far Point Station is one of the few places where people like us can move around freely—assuming we’ve got the money.”

  As they neared the end of the corridor, Masozi saw a pair of armed—and armored—guards standing at a scanning booth through which Jericho apparently intended for them to pass. The guards looked all business as one of them stepped forward with a large, clunky stun gun which clearly carried enough juice to put down a large bovine with a single shot.

  “Do you have any weapons to declare?” the guard asked through his re-breather, his voice distorted and static-filled as he spoke.

  “Not me,” Jericho replied easily.

  The guard gestured toward the scanning booth with his stunner, “Step in, sir.”

  Jericho moved into the booth, which began to hum as magnetic field scanners do, and a moment later the booth deactivated and the second guard nodded satisfactorily. “You’re clean.”

  The first guard turned to Masozi and repeated, “Do you have any weapons to declare?”

  Masozi was about to reply in the negative, but a subtle look from Jericho—a look directed at her leg—made her catch herself before she spoke. She looked down at her leg pointedly and said, “My leg’s high-grade hardware, and I’m not sure it would take too kindly to going through a low-grade scanner like that.” She tilted her head toward the booth, knowing it was indeed possible—though unlikely—that the magnetic scanner would cause issues for her new prosthetic.

  The first guard eyed her warily while the second produced a handheld, wand-like scanner of the type with which Masozi had become quite familiar during her career in law enforcement. “Do you consent to a manual scan?” the second guard asked as he approached.

  Masozi felt far more uneasy about the affair than she had expected she would, and nodded as she felt her ears begin to burn.

  The second guard activated the wand and started at her head before moving it slowly down her body, during which time she held her arms out to either side.

  The first guard, making no attempt at subterfuge, dialed up the power setting on the stun gun to maximum—enough to quite probably cause fatal cardiac arrhythmias—as his companion made his scans.

  When the wand passed over her leg, it began to beep wildly and the guard deliberately passed it around her new limb. He seemed determined to go over every millimeter of her leg, and just when she was about to object to the treatment, he deactivated the wand and nodded, “You’re clean.”

  The first guard lowered the stun gun and tilted his head toward Jericho, who was standing near the door on the other side of the scanning booth, “Welcome to Far Point Station; your biometrics have been logged and you’ve been granted six hour passes courtesy of Mr. Barragan. If your stay will exceed that time, speak with Station Security for long-term stay visas.”

  Masozi nodded wordlessly and moved through the scanning booth, where Jericho awaited. The two then moved to the door, which swished open as they reached it to reveal a lift car.

  The door to the lift closed after they entered, and Masozi breathed a sigh of relief. She did not know why she felt so nervous, but she was determined not to let it show any more than was absolutely necessary.

  The lift stopped after just a few seconds, and when the door swished open again it revealed a promenade which was very much at odds with the grungy, grimy corridor through which they had arrived.

  The promenade was brightly colored and trimmed with burnished metal on every square inch of exposed plating. The shape of the promenade curved gently upward as it extended to both the right and the left, and Masozi was more than a little awed by the fact that she was experiencing false, centrifugal gravity for the first time. The Zhuge Liang used different gravity generation methods—methods with which she was completely unfamiliar—but at least rotational forces made sense, given her limited understanding of physics.

  “With a station this big,” Jericho remarked as he set off to the left, “only about two percent of people experience nausea or dizziness, given the relatively slow rotational rate of the rings. But, being little more than tailless monkeys who reached the stars only a handful of millennia ago,” he added casually, “we weren’t exactly designed for this facsimile of gravity.”

  “We’re walking into an ambush,” Masozi said under her breath, making no attempt to hide her irritation, “and you’re waxing poetic about humanity’s adaptation to life among the stars?”

  He shrugged, “It beats trembling in my boots. Besides, if I didn’t think our odds were at least decent then I wouldn’t have brought us here.”

  “Where is Shu supposed to be?” Masozi asked, her eyes darting left and right as she forcibly maintained a relaxed posture. They had already moved nearly a hundred paces from the lift which had brought them to this level of the station. The promenade’s seemingly endless stream of shops, restaurants and offices painted a picture of affluence which seemed impossible given the relative isolation of the Manticore System and its dearth of natural resources.

  “She’ll be at The Hanging Vine,” Jericho replied, pointing briefly at a sign which read precisely that. It seemed to be a health resort of some kind, and Masozi’s eyes bulged when she saw the prices for the various treatments offered within.

  “How can anyone afford this?” she asked incredulously. “A foot bath costs three times my monthly salary back in New Lincoln!”

  Jericho chuckled. “Far Point is about as offshore as offshore can get,” he explained. “If the Zhuge Liang hadn’t used Hadden Enterprises ident codes, we wouldn’t have survived more than a few minutes after passing the station’s outer sovereignty threshold—and it wouldn’t have survived crossing the inner threshold. The residences here are vacant the vast majority of the time,” he said, tilting his chin toward the doors opposite The Hanging Vine, and Masozi saw that those doors were beneath a sign which marked the entry to a closed-community of apartments. “And if you think the pedicures are expensive, you should see the price tag for a five hundred cubic foot living space.”

  “So this is…what,” Masozi began, realizing that the reality of Far Point was nothing like she had read of it, “a private retreat for the rich and shameless?”

  “More like a safe house to be used only in case of emergency,” Jericho replied measuredly. “Purchase of one of the residences grants the owner a lifetime visa, which covers utility costs like air, water, and power. The residents don’t pay for the amenities like you and I are used to, Adjuster,” he said as he pulled the glass door open, gesturing for her to enter before him. “They pay for the discretion and the guarantee of freedom while they stay here—a guarantee that’s backed by armaments which probably rival HE One’s defensive equipment.”

  After entering the lobby of the health spa—which smelled faintly of lavender and pine, while the sounds of chirping birds and crickets played softly in the background—Masozi saw a docent wearing a long, form-fitting cheongsam-style dress. Masozi was fairly certain she could never squeeze her broad, athletic frame into such a garment, but on the thin docent it looked quite flattering.

  “Have you an appointment?” the docent asked, her hands clasped delicately before herself as she made eye contact with Masozi.

  “We don’t have an appointment,” Jericho said, and the docent’s almond-shaped eyes gently moved to meet Jericho’s.

  “I am sorry,” the docent said serenely, “but we do not cater to walk-ins.”

  “This is no walk-in,” Jericho said pleasantly. “Shu’s expecting us.”r />
  The docent’s posture, still rigidly bound by the form-fitting dress, relaxed fractionally and she gestured to a set of doors opposite those through which they had entered. “Take the hall to the far end; your friend has rented the last room on the right.”

  “Thank you,” Jericho nodded before gesturing for Masozi to precede him.

  She did so, and the door automatically opened as she approached. The hallway was short, with only four doors on each side, and it was clear that none of them were occupied except the one which the docent had indicated they should enter.

  “I still don’t like this,” she whispered to Jericho.

  “This is just the cost of doing business at this level,” he replied easily as he opened the door and strode into the room beyond. “You’re not supposed to like it.”

  The steam which poured out of the room hit Masozi like a blast of engine exhaust, but she pushed through and closed the door behind her before looking around the small, twelve foot by twelve foot room.

  “Jericho,” she heard a woman’s voice say with obvious relief, and her eyes adjusted to find a medium thin woman with jet black hair and facial features bearing similarity to those of the docent. “I’m sorry; I didn’t know what else to do. All my networks were burned minutes after I dropped off the link with you back in New Lincoln; I barely managed to evade the sweeper teams long enough to get out of there.”

  “It’s ok, Shu,” Jericho said, “you did well just to get here.” Masozi’s eyes snapped left and right as she looked for signs of the ambush which they had been expecting, but she saw nothing—which only served to heighten her anxiety. “Have they made contact with you?”

  Shu bit her lip for a moment before shaking her head. “They’ve been circumspect—for amateurs,” she added disdainfully, “but I’ve been under constant surveillance since setting foot on this station three days ago. I’m guessing that even this room’s bugged by now—”

  “That would be correct,” interrupted a man’s voice over a small intercom built into the doorjamb. No sooner had he spoken than the door slid shut and a series of mag-locks engaged, sealing the three of them within the fully-heated sauna. “I do so apologize for the uncouth measures we’ve been forced to take,” the man apologized, his voice melodious and even jolly sounding, “but you must understand that it is not every day we receive a request to verify the supposed Adjustment of a Tyrannis-level Adjuster.”

  “What ‘uncouth measures’ is he talking about?” Masozi asked, fighting to keep her heart rate from skyrocketing as she shot Shu a dire look.

  Shu shrugged her shoulders helplessly, but Jericho chuckled. “You must be Newman,” he said lightly, but Masozi could see that his focus was every bit as sharp as her own.

  “I confess I had not wished to meet under such circumstances,” the man replied, “but the time for pleasantries is not yet at hand. Jericho Winchester Bronson: there is actionable evidence which shows that, during your last meeting with Adjuster Obunda, you killed the Virgin System’s most accomplished Adjuster in cold blood. Do you deny that you were involved with his death?”

  “I don’t deny that I killed him,” Jericho shook his head firmly. “But I’d argue with your definition of ‘cold blood,’ at the very least.”

  There was a pause which lasted several seconds, after which the man’s voice returned, “I regret to inform you that the tribunal has reached a majority decision: your actions, taken in relation to a series of Adjustments—some of which remain active even now—satisfy the Proditores clause in the Timent Electorum’s charter. Nerve gas, of a kind not entirely dissimilar to that which you used at Philippa to slaughter thousands of Chimeran civilians, is now being pumped into your chamber’s air circulation system. Perhaps in death you will finally serve the voters who empowered you to act on their behalf—a privilege you coldly betrayed by slaughtering a fifth of Philippa’s civilian population.”

  Masozi felt her throat seize up at mention of nerve gas, and she instinctively held her breath—seeing Shu do the same. The raven-haired operator’s composure, however, seemed a step better than Masozi’s own, and that caused an unexpected spring of anger to well up within her.

  Jericho, however, seemed to actually relax as he heard the man’s declaration. “Good,” the square-jawed Adjuster said with a curt nod, “you know I adjusted Obunda, and you know we were responsible for firing on Abaca. What you don’t know is that this woman,” he pointed at Masozi—specifically at her prosthetic leg, “is the one who executed the Keno Adjustment, and was caught in the same nerve gas which cost the lives of Abaca’s civilian population.”

  There was another pause. “I fail to see the relevance,” the other man eventually said with the barest hint of interest in his voice.

  “She had protective equipment which was compromised during her extraction,” Jericho explained in a quick, but unhurried voice, “she lost her leg—and very nearly lost her life—because of that bioweapon.”

  “Even if true,” Newman retorted smoothly, “throughout human history, fanatics have subjected themselves to potentially fatal circumstances in order to carry out their charges. That she survived—merely losing a leg for her troubles—is rather less than convincing of her innocence in the tragedy of Philippa than you seem to believe it should be.”

  “And I lost my arm,” Jericho said, raising his permanently ruined, markedly atrophied limb, “while being tortured at the hands of an agent—one calling himself Stiglitz—who claimed to be part of the Virgin Interplanetary Investigative Unit. But we all know he didn’t really work for them, don’t we?”

  Again, a pause, but this one lasted considerably longer than the previous ones so Masozi decided to put her oar in before her heart rate passed the point of no return. “Stiglitz was working with New Lincoln Chief Investigator Afolabi,” she said quickly, “they tried to secure my complicity with their attempted cover-up of the Cantwell Adjustment—to which I had initially been assigned as lead Investigator—and pass it off as a political assassination by a rival. When I refused, they tried to have me killed while covering it up as a deadly gas leak—one which cost my neighbors their lives,” she finished angrily. “So if you want to kill us then go right ahead, but you’ll only be shooting yourselves in the feet by doing so since we’re the only ones who have survived these people’s machinations.”

  “Obunda was working with them as well,” Jericho said, picking up precisely where Masozi had left off and giving her the briefest look of approval as he did so. “He had this Tyrannis Mark,” he explained, producing the Mark from his pocket, “and has held it for years without acting on it.”

  “Do you have proof of Adjuster Obunda’s involvement in this supposed conspiracy?” Newman asked neutrally.

  “Not yet,” Jericho shook his head evenly. “That’s why we came here: to collect Shu, who’s the best tech expert I know, and return to Virgin to gather sufficient evidence to that effect. I can’t do that without her,” Jericho said, giving Shu a hard look as he continued, “which made the risk of running—not walking,” he added with a snort, “into your little trap worthwhile. Events are already in motion which will become uncontrollable if we don’t act quickly, and as long as I’ve got breath in my body then I’ve got a job I intend to do.”

  “We are more than capable of executing whatever Adjustments may or may not be called for on behalf of the Virgin System,” Newman said dismissively. “During the absence of a qualified local Timent Electorum agent, it is acceptable for a tribunal to process whatever Adjustments are triggered.”

  “Then why haven’t you?” Masozi snapped, surprised to find she was less than concerned about the pending nerve gas which Newman had mentioned. “Why leave the Adjustment in Obunda’s hands for five years if you’re capable of doing—or willing to do—the duty which Virgin’s people depend on you to do?!”

  Another silent pause, “Though these circumstances are unusual in the extreme, the tribunal has reviewed the Keno and Blanco Marks via wireless interface
during this interview and a majority finds sufficient evidence for a temporary stay of Adjustment at this time.” The door to the sauna opened, and only then did Masozi realize just how insufferably hot she was in the damned steam pit. Cold air washed over her body as the temperatures equalized with the corridor outside, and Newman said, “Please join us at Tacos el Rey; we are waiting there to debrief you in greater detail.”

  The speaker went silent, and Jericho gestured for Masozi and Shu to exit before him. Masozi set her jaw as she felt the urge to hyperventilate following the unexpected entrapment, and pushed her way past the older Jericho with Shu close on her heels.

  They exited the spa and made their way back down the promenade, where Jericho appeared confident that he knew how to reach their proscribed destination as his long legs made it difficult for the women to keep up without nearly jogging.

  “Who’s the beauty, Jay?” Shu asked after a few dozen paces, drawing a sharp look from Masozi as the other woman seemingly ignored her.

  “Shu, this is Masozi,” Jericho replied without breaking stride, “Masozi, this is Shu—or at least that’s the alias she’s always used in our professional interactions.”

  “How can we trust her, Jericho?” Masozi asked before Shu could reply. “For all we know, she’s part of this little snare.”

  Jericho snickered, and Shu sliced an icy glance over at Masozi before saying, “I’d die before I betrayed Jericho. If I’d known there was poison gas, I wouldn’t—“

  “There probably wasn’t any gas, Shu,” Jericho interrupted dismissively. “Though I don’t doubt their intentions were indeed to kill us if we hadn’t cleared their little hurdles.”

  Masozi felt a surge of mixed relief and outrage when she realized that he was probably right. Nerve gas on a space station—even one as large as Far Point—would represent a catastrophic danger to the populace aboard it. Adjusters, according to their mandate, were supposed to limit collateral damage whenever possible. So it stood to reason that a bioweapon of any kind in a confined space would violate their most fundamental precepts.