Ure Infectus (Imperium Cicernus Book 4) (18 page)

“You’re better than I expected,” the larger man growled as
he put his left hand to his neck. Amazingly, the blood flow seemed to have
almost ceased and Jericho concluded that the other man had an active repair
system, likely based on nano-technology of some sort—yet another advantage the
younger, stronger, better-equipped man held over him. As Jericho’s adversary
charged forward, he plucked the needle-dart from his chest and dropped it to
the floor before taking stiff, laborious steps toward the backpedaling Jericho.

Jericho could already feel the powerful tranquilizer’s first
effects, and knew he had no choice but to attack if he was to have any chance
at victory. Even the tiny quantity of tranquilizer he had exposed himself to
via the other man’s blood would be enough to slow his reflexes enough to make
the affair utterly one-sided—and brief.

The hulking warrior stepped forward and expertly whipped the
tip of his blade in a seemingly wild, but clearly well-practiced series of
slashes, swipes, and stabs. Any one of them would be more than capable of
crippling Jericho, but the only reason Jericho was still alive was because the
tranquilizer in the other man’s system seemed to be affecting his legs more
than his arms. His approach was therefore slowed just enough that Jericho could
stay out of range of the weapon.

A monomolecular blade was especially dangerous since very
little kinetic force was required to penetrate all but the most advanced
personal armor. So a person wielding one would only need to make contact with a
lightly-armored target to inflict a serious wound.

The blade came closer and closer to finding Jericho’s flesh
with each swipe, and Jericho knew he had no more choice in the matter. He threw
Sasaki’s tanto at his assailant, but the larger man reflexively batted it away
using his monomolecular blade.

However, by doing so he created a brief opening—and Jericho
used that opening to enter inside the other man’s guard and bring the
pistol-gripped shotgun’s muzzle up into the other man’s gut. No sooner had the
shotgun pressed against the hulking warrior’s abdomen than Jericho pulled the
trigger.

There was a muffled ‘whump’ which was barely noticeable, and
three separate pieces of the man’s body went flying in opposite directions.
Those pieces—the head and attached arms, along with each individual leg—then
fell to the floor in the middle of the hallway amid a spray of half-congealed
blood and other tissues which had previously formed the man’s powerfully-built
torso.

Wiping the man’s gore from his face—and careful not to allow
any of it into his mouth in the process—Jericho reached down and picked up the
monomolecular blade, along with its sheath, before returning to the staircase. His balance was slightly affected from the
tranquilizer, and his movements were less coordinated than he would have liked,
but he felt confident that he had just dealt with the final obstacle between
himself and his target.

His left leg hurt terribly, but his range of motion was more
or less unaffected for the time being. So he stiffly ascended to the landing
and made his way to the far end of the short hall—after collecting Sasaki’s
tanto and sticking it back in its own sheath.

The door where the brutally powerful assassin had apparently
come from was ajar, and Jericho pushed it open to see precisely what he had
expected to see.

General Pemberton was seated in the very chair the
intelligence packet had indicated he would be sitting in, and that chair
provided a reasonable line of sight to the hilltop on which Jericho had
intended to set up on with his anti-material cannon.

But the General was not sitting in that position of his own
free will. He had clearly been restrained chemically, as well as physically via
plastic bindings which wrapped around his wrists and secured them to the arms
of the chair.

Jericho knew his time was limited and, seeing as he had
actually expected to find some variation of the scene which was now before him,
he wasted no time in retrieving a pair of syringes from the satchel he had
brought. He winced in pain as he knelt beside the General, as a lance of
white-hot fire ran down the leg the hulking assassin had injured on the staircase
with a brutally effective knee.

He injected the first cocktail, which would nullify the
majority of readily-available tranquilizers and pain killers within thirty
seconds of administration, and then waited for the medicine to work through
Pemberton’s system.

Precisely on schedule, General Pemberton’s head lolled
around and a grimace of pain flashed across his face. His eyes wandered
aimlessly for several seconds until finally settling on Jericho, and when that
happened Jericho injected the second syringe into the Lieutenant General’s
veins.

“Who…are…you?” Pemberton asked as he slowly came to from the
drug-induced stupor.

“Your executioner,” Jericho replied evenly after withdrawing
the second needle from the other man’s arm. “I’ve injected you with a truth
serum you’re ill-equipped to resist. Tell me why you stood down the automated
defense grid when Blanco’s drones came into range—why did you betray the people
you swore to protect?”

Pemberton looked at him dully, and Jericho heard a commotion
outside. They had apparently discovered the tranquilized guard posted at the
barn. It was only a matter of seconds—perhaps a minute—before the entire
compound encircled the safe house and cut him off from any chance of escape.

“It was inevitable,” Pemberton whimpered as his face
contorted into a look of pure misery. He began to sob, but Jericho slapped him
across the face as hard as he could—emotional lability was a common side effect
of the particular truth serum he had employed, and physical pain was sometimes
capable of cutting through it.

“Die with some dignity, General,” Jericho growled. While the
slap seemed to only barely get the other man’s attention, Jericho’s words
seemed to snap him out of his stupor completely. “Why didn’t you open fire on
the drones? Answer quickly.”

Pemberton nodded as his eyes seemed to gain some measure of
focus. “They…the SDF Admirals…they had my granddaughters,” he replied as his
face twisted in shameful remorse. “They…they were going to destroy them…do you
understand? They were going to
hurt
them, and only if they were lucky
would they be allowed to die afterward!” Once again he began to sob, but
Jericho had no time for the other man’s protestation.

The man’s dereliction of duty was at least explainable now,
if not still wholly inexcusable. “You accepted the credit transfer to your
off-world account so that you would take the fall—better you be Adjusted than
your grandchildren be…harmed,” Jericho concluded, and the other man nodded
rapidly. But Jericho shook his head adamantly as he stood and made as if to
leave, “I can’t
Adjust
you.”

“No, please!” Pemberton blurted as an alarm went up outside.
“You have to kill me now—it’s the only way my little girls will be spared!”

“I’m sorry,” Jericho said with a shake of his head. “You
failed nearly four thousand people by tacitly approving President Blanco’s
illegal order—you don’t deserve my sympathy.”

“You’re right,” Pemberton stammered quickly, “but I have
information!”

Jericho stopped at the doorway, knowing he had only seconds
to secure whatever information Pemberton was offering—information which would
provide an unexpected bonus, since it likely had to do with President Blanco.
“Speak,” he snapped angrily as searchlights began to stream through the
windows.

“Your word first,” Pemberton retorted with a measure of
resolve more befitting a thirty year veteran of the armed forces. “Promise
you’ll file my Adjustment as properly done…and I’ll give you enough information
to put that tyrant behind bars for good.”

“Not good enough,” Jericho quipped. Then the searchlights
unexpectedly went dark and Jericho felt his hackles rise.

“They’re clearing out, which means you have forty seconds
before the area is pulverized by the attack drones lifting off from Fort Sumter
this very second,” the General said heavily. “You can’t escape without my help.
Even if you get past the perimeter guards, the drones will cut you down in
seconds.”

Jericho realized he was probably right. The guards outside
had apparently not actually been posted to stop Pemberton from being assassinated…the
entire thing had just been an elaborate trap—a trap intended to snare
him
.
So when they had ascertained his location, the guards had naturally pulled back
to a safe distance and were likely now awaiting the impending drone strike.

“Fine,” Jericho growled, stomping over to Pemberton’s chair,
“I’ll do it—where’s your evidence?” He despised the idea of lodging a false
report—an offense which carried with it potentially lethal consequences—but he
had made up his mind. And once Jericho gave his word, he kept it.

“Thank you—thank you,” Pemberton stammered through tears.

“The evidence, General!”
Jericho
barked.

Pemberton nodded quickly. “On South Virginia there is a
woman named Tera St. Murray—first name: T-E-R-A—tell her I sent you and repeat
the phrase ‘The good of us all.’ She will give you what you need.” He tilted
his head in the direction of the stairs, “Below the staircase is a trap door
which leads to a tunnel. You still have time to use it for escape—go!”

Without word or fanfare Jericho reached down and snapped
Lieutenant General Pemberton’s neck, killing him instantly. He then did
precisely as the late General had suggested and moved as quickly as possible
toward the base of the stairs on the ground floor.

His silent countdown was already at twenty elapsed seconds when
he found the trap door, and after opening it he saw that opened into a shaft
which descended into the pure darkness below. There was a ladder, and Jericho
quickly began to descend the ladder after closing the heavy, iron trap door
behind him. They would certainly discover the door’s existence—assuming they
did not already know of it—upon inspecting the soon-to-be pile of rubble above
him, which is why speed was critical.

No sooner had he reached the bottom of the thirty foot deep
shaft and set out down the short, narrow tunnel—which was barely tall enough to
permit a stooped, shambling gait—than the ground above him was rocked with a
series of violent explosions. The shaft through which he had descended
collapsed loudly behind him, and he quickened his pace as dust and small bits
of stony debris began to dislodge from the crude tunnel’s walls.

The cloud of dust which the collapsed shaft kicked up choked
his breathing, and he did his best to filter his breaths through the hem of his
sleeve. The dust eventually settled and, after what felt like several hours and
miles of shuffling, shambling, and stooping, Jericho finally came to a stone
door with heavy, iron fittings.

After several minutes of intense effort Jericho was able to
force the door’s rusted hinges to unlock from their rust-locked position, and
he managed to squeeze himself out of the cleverly concealed door—which looked
like nothing but a section of rock in a small, rocky, outcropping .

He took a deep breath of clean, fresh air and looked up. For
an uncharacteristic moment, Jericho took in the beauty of the stars scattered
across the night sky before setting off in the opposite direction from the safe
house—an area now illuminated by the dull, orange glow of the buildings’
burning remains.

Masozi opened the door to the tiny, low-rent lodging—her
fifth in as many days—and appraised the ‘amenities’ such as they were. The room
itself stank of human filth, with just enough residual disinfectant smell to
suggest someone had made something vaguely resembling an effort to remove the
offensive odor, but had failed miserably in doing so.

She had decided against staying in one spot for too long,
and over the course of those five days she had begun to see society differently
than she had done just a month earlier in New Lincoln. As she made her way
through the streets, it became a fairly simple matter to avoid undue scrutiny
by employing the very methods she had once learned to identify in those she
believed to be guilty of a crime.

The truth was that she
had
committed several crimes
in the weeks since fleeing New Lincoln but, much as she was loathe to admit it,
she had found them to be absolutely necessary to her continued survival so that
she could learn who had been behind her framing…and why it had taken place.

Masozi had bought a small assortment of foodstuffs for
dinner, as well as for the coming morning’s breakfast. She had less than a
day’s work left to get all of the evidence notarized, and the thought had
occurred to her that she had no way to get in touch with Jericho now that the
Esmerelda
Empática
had offloaded, reloaded, and subsequently set sail for New Lincoln
once again.

So she set down on the borderline filthy bed in the two
meter by three meter, windowless room, and carefully attempted to construct a
reasonably sanitary setting for her dinner—a dinner which would consist
primarily of steamed vegetables and black rice.

Not long after she had finished her meal there was a knock
at the door. Masozi—who had been unwilling to risk securing an illegal weapon
thus far—looked around for an improvised weapon of some sort. She found very
little, so instead she quietly moved to the door and looked out through the
peephole.

What she saw outside made her jaw clench tightly as she
opened the door, revealing Jericho standing in the hallway with tattered
clothing which had been reduced to little better than rags.

“How did you find me?” she asked bitterly as she stepped
back from the door. It really was surprising that he had managed to do so with
such alacrity—she had only paid for the room an hour earlier!

“I’m good at my job,” he replied after stepping inside and
closing the door behind himself. “And none of what I do would be possible if I
couldn’t find who I was looking for—especially when they’re trying to hide.”

He held out a hand expectantly, and Masozi felt cold fury at
his presumption. But she had played the scene out several times in her head
already, and she knew that to do anything other than comply with his request
would be counterproductive.

She reached into a satchel she had purchase several days
earlier—a satchel which contained everything supporting her new identity—and
withdrew the same data pad he had given her on the
Esmerelda Empática.
Jericho accepted the pad and began to peruse her collected efforts of the time
she had spent in Aegis. Of the one hundred eight pieces of evidence, only seven
of them still required authentication and most of those were third or fourth
pieces of evidence corroborating already-notarized articles.

He studied the contents for twenty minutes before nodding in
satisfaction. “I’m impressed,” he said with a modicum of respect in his voice
as Masozi sat down on the tiny bed, “I couldn’t have gotten that much done in
the same time. It’s more than enough to satisfy reasonable
certainty,
”
he said confidently, “which means our time in Aegis is at an end.”

Jericho winced as he sat down on the arm of the room’s only
chair, and Masozi saw his hand go to his hip reflexively. She had noticed his
movements had been stiff when he had entered the room and Masozi quirked a cold
grin as she said, “Don’t tell me…you broke your hip?”

He shot her a flat look before reluctantly nodding. “Not
completely, but it’s going to need surgery to properly repair,” he admitted. “I
won’t be any good in a fight until I get it fixed but, if I’m right, we won’t
have to worry about that in a few hours.”

Masozi cocked an eyebrow. “I’m not certain there
is
a
‘we,’ Jericho,” she said evenly. “You saved my life and I am grateful for that,
but I can’t live like a fugitive. I did your busy work here while you were out
doing,” she gestured to his tattered clothing, “whatever it was you were doing.
But I think it’s time for me to go my own way.”

Jericho nodded agreeably. “If that’s your choice, I won’t
try to stop you. But just because Benton threw the locals off your back by
killing your old identity and giving you a new one doesn’t mean Stiglitz isn’t
still looking for you. They want you,” he said with a piercing look, “and
they’re not going to stop until they get you.”

“Why?” she demanded. “Why would I be important to them? I’m
just an Investigator!”

“You know his face, for one thing—” Jericho began, but
Masozi interrupted.

“Faces are easy enough to change,” she retorted hotly, her voice
rising higher than she had wanted. “Give a surgeon enough money and you can
have a whole new cranium in less than a day.”

Jericho smirked slightly and nodded. “True enough,” he
allowed, “but you also know why Cantwell was killed—and apparently that’s
information they don’t want to be made public.”

“Do I
actually
know why you…Adjusted Mayor Cantwell?”
she pressed, having driven the entire conversation to that point. What she saw
flash through Jericho’s eyes was something she hadn’t expected to see: relief.

“No, you don’t,” he admitted as he exhaled, and she actually
recoiled in surprise at his frankness, “but if you want to know the truth then
you have no choice but to come with me.”

“Why won’t you just tell me?” she demanded, springing to her
feet and nearly hitting her head on the low ceiling as she did so.
“Why the need for all this secrecy?”

Jericho fixed her with the cold, unyielding look that showed
him for what he really was: an assassin who cared only about accomplishing his
mission. For a moment she was afraid he had deemed her outburst too much to
tolerate, but she didn’t care. Her life—everything she had dedicated herself
to—had been destroyed back in New Lincoln. Even if, by some miracle, she
managed to convince the authorities of her innocence that would make little
difference to a man like Agent Stiglitz.

She needed a reason to keep going on the path she found
herself treading. Because without it, the only options available to her ranged
from unpalatable to outright unacceptable—and she was determined not to cast
about aimlessly for the next handful of years eking out a living on the edges
of society.

Jericho’s visage relaxed and he gestured almost
apologetically toward the bed on which Masozi had just sat. She folded her arms
across her chest defiantly, and Jericho sighed before hanging his head
fractionally, “If I told you that then you would be in even greater danger than
you are. All I can say is that my primary purpose in all of this,” he waved the
data slate pointedly, “is to prevent abuses of power like the one which has
already destroyed your life. I
could
give you the very details your
investigative mind thirsts for,” he said with a hard look, “but I hold your
well-being in a higher regard than that.”

She had not expected that particular response, so Masozi
simply met Jericho’s gaze for a long, silent, while before shaking her head in
frustration. “You’ve got me over a barrel here,” she said, hearing the
vulnerability she tried so hard to conceal clearly expressed in her voice, “so
I guess I have no choice but to go along with you.”

“I assure you, Investigator,” Jericho said as he stood to
his nearly full height, stooping to avoid bumping his head into the ceiling,
“nothing could be further from the truth…but I’ll admit that I’m more than
casually interested in your coming choices.”

“You mean to suggest you didn’t already know I would
acquiesce?” she snapped harshly.

Jericho chuckled as he opened the door. “Maybe I did at
that, but soon enough you’ll be exposed to things that will make you rather
less…predictable.” She felt a flare of raw anger at his actual suggestion that
she was predictable, but the truth was he had played her perfectly to that
point so she held back a scathing retort as Jericho gestured to the empty
hallway, “In any event, our…escort isn’t known for his patience so I suggest we
hurry to meet his people—while we still have the chance.”

Masozi wordlessly collected her things and followed Jericho
out onto the street, where he hailed a conveyance and they set off toward the spaceport.

“Are you certain this is going to work?” Masozi pressed as
they filed into the security queue which led into the spaceport. The Aegis
spaceport was—aside from the Virgin Halls of Governance compound—the most
heavily-secured facility on the entire planet.

“Benton said it would,” Jericho replied dismissively.
“That’s good enough for me.”

“I’m not so certain,” she muttered as they approached the
species and gender segregation lanes. Very few aliens actually traveled
independently, but Virgin was considered progressive in its egalitarianism
toward its varied inhabitants, so several dedicated lanes had been provided for
those aliens with decidedly different biology than humans. “This is like
walking into a furnace on a cold day and hoping it doesn’t activate.”

“Nonsense,” Jericho said with a light laugh that did little
to soothe her fraying nerves. “All ports—whether they’re land, sea, air, or
space—are more heavily invested in screening incoming articles or people than
they are in screening outgoing ones. For intra-system travel they’ll perform a
cursory background check on our idents, verify our travel documents are in
order, and so long as we aren’t physically carrying anything hazardous or
illegal they’ll be all-too-happy to take our money and let us indulge our
wanderlust.”

“So we
aren’t
leaving the Virgin system,” Masozi
breathed a sigh of relief.

“Of course not,” Jericho replied as their lanes diverged
into male and female segments, and he unexpectedly reached over and touched her
neck with his surprisingly cool, dry hand. She shot him a look of offended
surprise, but he ignored it and continued conversationally, “My business
license currently only allows me to conduct transactions in the Virgin
system—but I am looking into aggressive expansion. Besides, intersystem travel
is more expensive than I could afford.”

With that, the two lanes separated and Masozi entered a
long, dark tunnel with a glassy-looking interior. She knew it was a
bio-scanner, and that as she walked through the tunnel it would check her
biorhythms, physical dimensions, the chemical composition of her clothing, and
even run a base chemical analysis of her entire body using spectrometry and
other methods. This would ensure that she wasn’t smuggling anything inside her
body—even something which had been dissolved into her various organs or tissues
for later extraction.

She passed through the tunnel and saw a green light flash as
she walked through the exiting archway, and from her time studying to become an
Investigator she knew that the green light made the occupants of the tunnel
feel more secure and this decreased their anxiety levels.

But she knew that it also meant quite literally nothing,
since as soon as a person entered a major port their movements were tracked
automatically and logged in the port’s security records for rapid analysis.
Masozi had, herself, apprehended more than a few criminals intent on escaping
the long arm of Virgin’s justice using the very system which now threatened to
identify her.

Still, she had to fight the anxiety from surging to the fore
of her mind. And just as thought solidified itself, a wave of vertigo hit her
and she had to brace herself against a nearby rail to keep from falling down.

“Ma’am?” a nearby female Port Security Official said
neutrally as she took a step toward Masozi. “Are you feeling ill?”

Masozi shook her head and made to reply, but before she
could do so she felt the sudden urge to vomit. She placed her hand over her mouth
as she doubled over and managed to fight the urge down. Thankfully it passed
and she was able to regain her bearings and stature before shaking her head
again and saying, “I’m fine; I’m just nervous, that’s all.”

“Come with me, ma’am,” the woman instructed from the other
side of the rail, and Masozi felt a wave of trepidation come over her.
Will
I be apprehended because of nothing more than a wave of pre-flight jitters
?!
she
wondered bitterly.

Masozi reluctantly followed the woman, knowing that to protest
was simply to invite even more scrutiny and the official opened a small gate
set in the rail. She indicated Masozi should exit the queue and follow her, so
she did as instructed and the two women proceeded to a nearby booth.

“Have a seat, ma’am,” the official instructed curtly.

“I really think I’m fine,” Masozi protested weakly. She had
no idea what had come over her, and her heart rate was at least twenty beats
per minute faster than it was at rest. She also knew that if she didn’t protest
at least a little, that it might be read as an admission of guilt and
investigated.

“Sit down, ma’am,” the woman instructed more forcefully,
actually placing a hand on Masozi’s shoulder and giving her a not-so-gentle
push toward the nearby bench. So Masozi did as she was instructed, and after
she had sat down the official drew the curtain across the entry to the two
meter square booth.