In that moment, and for not the first time in her life, she was glad of her dark skin—if her skin was as pale as Jericho’s or Shu’s, her flush of embarrassment would have been all too obvious.
“Why would you die for him?” Masozi asked into the growing silence as they made their way down the promenade. “He told me you were a mercenary to the core—which is one of the reasons we decided to risk retrieving you.”
Shu snorted. “Some things you do for money, other things you do for moral reasons,” she said, her eyes lingering on the back of Jericho’s head for several seconds before finishing, “I wouldn’t work for this old jack-ass if he didn’t pay better than I can get on the open market, but that doesn’t mean he’s just a charge account to me. Without loyalty to something greater than yourself, you’re just an animal,” she said, slicing another glance Masozi’s way as the corner of her mouth turned in a smirk, “and Jay’s always been good to me.”
Before Masozi could retort, they reached a stall which measured no more than three meters on the front. There was a sign over the top with an unimaginative logo which incorporated a crown and probably a sword hilt into the lettering, and the door was propped open.
Inside was a long, narrow room with a kitchen window and ordering counter at the far end. Along the left wall was a countertop with a dozen stools fixed to the floor before it, and barely enough space to fit a plate of food on. There were no patrons—which, judging from the exorbitant prices on the menu, was far from surprising to Masozi—but there was a man on the other side of the kitchen window wearing a chef’s hat.
He had medium brown skin, a short-trimmed black goatee, and a bandana around his head. He was short in stature and decidedly overweight, but that was not an altogether uncommon condition for a chef. Masozi concluded he was Latino as their trio approached the ordering counter.
Pulling a pencil from behind his ear, the chef slid an empty order slip onto the counter before himself and asked, “What would you like?”
“Answers,” Jericho replied dryly.
The chef’s mouth quirked into a grin and he began to twirl the pencil between his fingers. “Then you’ve come to the right place.”
“And you must be Russo,” Jericho said, proffering his hand. “Tera St. Murray’s told me some stories about you; I’m glad we could meet, even considering the circumstances.”
The rotund man shrugged. “Anonymity is one of the only real defenses any of us has these days,” he said with his mild accent, swiping a hand over a control panel and causing the window at the storefront to instantly turn opaque. “And it’s a good idea to keep from telling a woman like Tera St. Murray all of your secrets.”
Masozi stepped forward, “So you’re on the tribunal?”
Russo nodded. “This station has been my home for twelve years—ever since I immigrated under less-than-legal circumstances,” he explained with a mischievous grin. “But by the time the authorities wised up to my bad paperwork, I had rendered sufficient…” his eyes flashed with dangerous warmth, “services to warrant full citizenship. Among those services was the removal of the former, corrupt, Tyrannis-level Adjuster.” He sighed wistfully, “I don’t get out much these days, and things are pretty peaceful in my little corner of the Sector. So here I am,” he said, looking around the tiny restaurant, “serving the occasional, ridiculously overpriced taco and enduring the usual quota of epithets and ethnic discrimination.” His smile turned broad as he added, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“So where are the others?” Masozi pressed, eager to be done with this particular phase of their mission—a mission whose totality she was still in the dark regarding.
“They’re coming,” Russo replied, gesturing to the door as it opened, “speak of the devils.”
Masozi turned to see a man, who appeared to be in his fifties, enter the mini-restaurant. He had an unassuming posture, and his clothing appeared to be that of a low-level administrator or businessman. “Mr. Bronson,” the man said, and Masozi instantly recognized his timber and tone as belonging to the man named Newman, who had spoken to them via the sauna’s intercom, “I’m so glad we could finally meet in person.”
Jericho nodded curtly. “Your reputation precedes you, Mr. Newman,” he said neutrally, and there was something in Jericho’s affect which put Masozi instantly on her guard—and she suspected it had nothing to do with the man’s threat to murder the three of them just a few short minutes earlier. “I can’t say it’s a pleasure, but I admit that I’ve been intrigued by the prospect of meeting the man behind the voice.”
“For an Infectus Adjuster,” Newman said, his false smile seeming like a serpent’s to Masozi as he spoke with a tongue she imagined to be forked, “your own reputation is considerable. That bit in New Lincoln a few months ago, with three Adjustments in a single day while using your own hands for each? Pure brilliance,” he congratulated.
“That makes two of the tribunal’s members,” Shu said irritably, clearly no more enamored with Newman than Masozi was, “where’s the third?”
“She is en route,” Newman assured her in his smooth voice. “And when she arrives, we’ll see what you have to say for yourselves. But before she arrives,” Newman said silkily, flitting a look at Jericho before making a show of removing his gloves, “perhaps we might entertain ourselves with some palaver?”
Masozi was no weak reed when it came to verbal banter, but after just a few minutes in the same room as Newman convinced her he was so much better than she was that engaging him could only result in humiliation.
Jericho, however, seemed unfazed by the other man’s suggestion and swung his leg over a nearby stool. “So long as it’s of the back-and-forth variety,” Jericho said, gesturing invitingly, “I’ve got no objections.”
Newman perched himself on the stool nearest the door—one which placed him opposite Jericho’s position at the bank of stools’ other end—and nodded agreeably. “As the guest, you should naturally go first.”
“Why was Obunda allowed to sit on this Mark for five years?” Jericho asked, sliding the Blanco Mark of Adjustment a few inches from his hand and tapping the countertop beside it.
Newman’s eyes twinkled, as though he knew something important but was not about to divulge it. “Tyrannis Adjustments are more complicated than Infectus Adjustments,” he said in a tone that bordered on patronizing, but failed to become overtly so. “There is more latitude required when interpreting the definition of tyranny; most agree that it covers abuses of power which had been previously granted by the body politic in a manner which contravenes the founding principles of our society, or the imposed restrictions of the alleged tyrant’s current position within the government. Though there is also the matter of power which was unduly acquired—even if said power is not used against the people for whom it is intended to serve, the simple acquisition of it is often enough to trigger a Tyrannis review.”
Jericho’s face was unreadable as he gestured for Newman to proceed, “Your turn.”
Newman nodded agreeably, “If you suspected that Obunda was in some way compromised, and therefore unfit to discharge his duties as the lone Tyrannis-level Adjuster in the Virgin System, why did you not call for a tribunal to settle the matter?”
“Over the last four years,” Jericho replied without missing a beat, and Masozi found her eyes narrowing in concern as she watched the two of them spar—a match where their lives likely hung in the balance, “the Virgin System has had what some might call ‘bad luck’ when it comes to Adjusters nearing the requisite 100,000 Redeemed Lives required to take up Tyrannis contracts.” Jericho shrugged as though he was indifferent to the subject, but Masozi could see the tension in his neck as he did so, “I wasn’t going to become the sixth victim of the aforementioned bad luck, and I wasn’t going to be intimidated by whoever was striking from the shadows and eliminating my colleagues before they could pull back the curtain on the next level of Virgin’s branch of the Timent Electorum.”
“
That does not answer my question,” Newman said, his eyes turning flinty though his expression remained as smooth as a baby’s bottom.
Jericho held the other man’s gaze for a pregnant pause before saying, “Obunda was well-connected, and sat at the top of the Sector’s list of information specialists. There was no way that I—who lacked anything remotely similar to his tech background, and also lacked a trustworthy operator who could make up for that shortcoming after I’d gathered the necessary evidence—could realistically hope to call a tribunal without him finding out and making me victim number seven before that tribunal could convene.” Jericho folded his arms, and Masozi thought the affectation to be more deliberate than unconscious as he continued, “I gave him several chances to come clean at the end, but he’d have nothing of it—so I made sure the fight was on terrain that favored me and I removed him in accordance with TE protocols.”
Newman nodded slowly before gesturing for Jericho to take his turn.
“Why wasn’t a tribunal automatically instigated?” Jericho asked, leaning forward in his stool. “Obunda was not only sitting on the Blanco Mark, but under his watch not a single Adjuster had taken action against Governor Keno or her family. How could the other Systems’ Adjusters ignore what was happening in Virgin?”
“Technically,” Newman smiled, “those are two questions, but I will answer them nonetheless. To your first question: several tribunals were instigated in order to review Obunda’s failure to move forward on the Blanco Adjustment. Each tribunal—which had only a single holdover Tyrannis Adjuster from tribunal to tribunal, to remove the possibility of collusion—concluded that Obunda’s delays were reasonable, given the circumstantial nature of the evidence he was processing.” He drummed his fingers on the countertop for a few seconds before continuing, “To your second query, I can assure you that there are more eyes on the events taking place in the Virgin System than you would likely care to believe.”
“Which is exactly why,” Russo cut in from behind the counter, causing Masozi to face him for a moment as his round features hardened with each word he spoke, “nobody stepped in.”
“I don’t follow,” Masozi said, drawing a sharp look from Jericho—which she ignored as she pressed, “if you knew things were bad in Virgin, why not step in?”
“Every community must police itself, Investigator Masozi Blanco,” Newman explained, causing the hairs on the back of her neck to stand at the subtle emphasis he placed on her family name. “That is one of the fundamental necessities of the Timent Electorum; not every System implements the First Right in precisely the same fashion, and events within Virgin appeared to have not yet degraded so badly as to require outside intervention. If they had, we would have already cleansed every last Adjuster within Virgin—and we would not be having this pleasant conversation.”
“It sounds to me like someone needs to get his eyes checked,” she retorted, not giving an inch of ground to the self-assured, silken-tongued man between her and the door—who had just casually threatened her life. “If President Han-Ramil Blanco,” she stressed the family name emphatically, “had been dealt with earlier, he wouldn’t have been able to declare war on the corporations which run the Sector’s economy. Are you aware of the damage he’s already caused with his public declaration—a declaration echoed by at least four other System Presidents?!”
“Indeed I am,” Newman said easily, “the Sector’s financial markets have all teetered dangerously close to the breaking point, and even corporations which weren’t yet near the brink of financial collapse have filed en masse for bankruptcy protection as a collectively preemptive move against the inevitable liquidation of their stock. And that does not even mention their fear of possible punitive actions taken against them akin to that which President Blanco authorized against Hadden Enterprises.”
“That fear doesn’t just extend to the corporations and their employees,” Jericho said flatly, “it reaches the people who depend on those corporations for the goods and services which make their lives possible. If commerce shuts down, the Sector will plunge into—”
Newman held up a forestalling hand, “I fear we have wandered afield of our agreed upon format for this palaver.” His features were unshakably pleasant on the surface, but Masozi’s experience conducting interviews with cagy suspects led her to believe that Newman was trying to head the conversation off before it reached a particular topic. What that topic was, however, eluded her.
Masozi set her jaw, but she saw Jericho nod deliberately as he said, “You’re right; please continue.”
“You volunteered that you were responsible for the torpedoes which were launched over Abaca,” Newman continued in an all-too-pleasant voice. “Ignoring, for the moment, the issue of how an Infectus Adjuster came to possess the firepower necessary to take that particular action; how can you defend an action which resulted in the certain deaths of over half a million civilians?”
Masozi had wrestled with that particular decision of Jericho’s, as well, and the truth was she doubted that she could have—or, perhaps more importantly, would have—done likewise. But the cold, hard logic was immutable: there was evidence that the bioweapon which had taken her own leg had already spread throughout the majority of Philippa’s capitol city. Burning off the atmosphere was, unquestionably, the ‘correct’ choice if one was simply playing the percentages.
But she had no idea how a person was supposed to live with herself after making that type of choice. It seemed like the type of thing which would cause an unavoidable psychological breakdown, but Jericho had seemed unaffected by it.
“I had hard evidence in hand of a bioweapon attack against Abaca, and that attack had already claimed tens of thousands of lives before I even received confirmation of it,” Jericho replied, sounding more defensive than Masozi had anticipated. “Our best intelligence showed that there was no other way to contain the spread of the weapon, which would have spread across the entire planetoid and killed every human living there in relatively short order. I made a judgment call to save everyone outside of Abaca, and I’d make it again if I had to,” he said with finality.
“That’s pretty arrogant of you,” Russo said casually from behind the counter. “Those kinds of decision should be left to elected leaders—if for no other reason, that was enough for me to vote to execute you as soon as you set foot on Far Point.”
Jericho looked over his shoulder at the restaurateur, his eyebrows rising in apparent surprise but he said nothing as Newman continued.
“It was a difficult choice, to be sure,” the smooth-voiced man said with a solemn nod. “But when we exert such authority without having been granted it by the people to whom it belongs, how are we any different than the tyrants we would presumably protect them against?”
Jericho snorted bitterly, his grey-blue eyes fixing Newman for a long moment before he said, “I won’t be afraid of my actions’ consequences. I did what was right and what needed doing, when no one else could—or would. If that means I deserve to be punished then I gladly invite that punishment…but I’d do it all again without a moment’s hesitation.”
“History has shown, more times than we can count, that a fanatic’s self-righteousness is a dangerous thing,” Russo said darkly. “That’s what you sound like right now, Adjuster—a fanatic.”
Jericho shrugged. “As I said: I’d do it all again in a heartbeat. Someone has to stop these people before they do damage that can’t be repaired. And, from where I’m sitting, it’s not the Virgin System’s Adjusters that need to be purged—it seems that fate should be visited on those who would sit in judgment over them.”
“Bold words,” said Newman with a bemused sparkle in his eyes as the door swung open behind him. “Ah, excellent timing,” he said, spinning his stool to face the curvaceous woman who stepped into the dark restaurant, “allow me to introduce the third of our impromptu panel: Lady Jessica.”
Masozi’s eyes ran up and down the woman’s figure. She seemed shrink-wrapped in a velvet-l
ike dress which hugged every nook and cranny of her statuesque physique, and that dress flared out to nearly a meter diameter just above the floor where its hem hovered no more than an inch. Her skin was olive-colored, her hair was full and red, and her eyes were a striking shade of green which seemed to shine even in the dim light of the chamber.
Jericho stood from his stool, and while Masozi was far from jealous of the other woman’s figure—Masozi suspected Lady Jessica weighed no more than two thirds of what Masozi’s muscular, athletic frame did, and could probably be blown over by a hard sneeze if it caught her unaware—it was striking to see the look in Jericho’s eyes as he looked at her. She quickly realized that it wasn’t lust she saw in his visage, but something deeper…perhaps it was hope?
“Lady Jessica,” Jericho said with a short bow, “this is something of a surprise. How did you get involved in this?”
Her bearing was certainly haughty enough to suggest some sort of aristocracy in her lineage, but Masozi knew that only two Systems in the Chimera Sector had even permitted their Imperial Nobles to retain the titles of their nobility after they had been completely stripped of their power. One of those Systems had eventually abandoned the practice, and the other came under constant ridicule from the other Systems for their stubborn refusal to do likewise. It seemed that Lady Jessica was from the latter System, but Masozi had never heard of her.
“My home system of New Britain is indeed far,” she said with a measured tilt of her head, “but I was conducting a trade negotiation in the region, on behalf of our ship-building industry, when I received the summons.” Her eyes flitted briefly from Jericho to Shu, then landed on Masozi for a fractional pause as she added, “One does not lightly refuse a summons of this type if one values her life and its work. What are we without our many rituals and their attendant adherence to propriety?”
Sic Semper Tyrannis: The Chimera Adjustment, Book Two (Imperium Cicernus 5) Page 6
