Ure Infectus (Imperium Cicernus Book 4) (24 page)

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 agreement, 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?”