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

by Caleb Wachter

  “You always hated him, Tad,” Jake spat venomously, but he made no attempt to make good on his former threat as Jericho stepped back to a respectful distance of a few feet. “Just because you married into the family doesn’t give you the right—“

  “What about me, then?” the curly-haired woman who had met Jericho at the door demanded angrily. “He was my father just like he was yours, Jake; is my opinion meaningless, too?”

  “How can you…?” Jake asked in disbelief, and Jericho knew that sentiment in the room had taken a thankful turn in his favor. The less violence he needed to enact, the better it would be for everyone involved. “After mom died you were his favorite, Sharon; how can you betray him like this?”

  “If we don’t submit ourselves to our society’s laws,” she fired back, “then how long will those laws even appear to matter?” She shook her head grimly after looking at her father’s unconscious, effectively brain-dead body on the bed. “Who among us would have known the dangers of ignoring the law better than Dad?”

  “Besides,” Tad said patiently, and a quick glance confirmed that Tad and Sharon wore matching wedding rings, “what does it matter now? He’s already gone, Jake; I can’t imagine he would resist even if this man had shown up while he was still conscious.”

  Jake seethed silently, and the occupants of the room between Jericho and Mr. Blackwell parted to grant him a path to the man’s bed. Jericho moved toward Blackwell’s bedside and produced the Mark of Adjustment, which he placed on the small table at the head of the bed.

  He then reached up to deactivate the life-support equipment, but before his fingers hit the console a woman on the other side of the bed protested, “I can’t let you do this.”

  Jericho stopped and gave her a piercing look, “You must be the hospice nurse.”

  She nodded and repeated, “I can’t let you do this.”

  “Be careful with your words,” Jericho warned, “you’re dispassionately involved in this, unlike the family. I have a duty—“

  “I’ve got a duty to carry out my orders,” she said stiffly as she produced a stun-gun from inside her green lab coat. “If you—“

  Jericho lashed out with his good hand and took the weapon from her before, without a word, firing it point blank at her torso. Her body was seized by convulsions which lasted for just a few seconds before she collapsed unconsciously onto the bed.

  After looking around the room—and seeing Jake had regained his feet—Jericho reached up and deactivated the life-support equipment one piece at a time until the bed’s array of equipment was fully powered down. He then opened up the master control unit and yanked several of the wires out, ensuring the bed’s systems could not be reactivated after he left.

  He felt for a pulse at Blackwell’s left carotid, and after a minute of finding none—and seeing all of the monitors go flat during that same interval—he silently made his way to the door.

  “Blanco’s right about you people,” Jake said, his voice wavering with a mixture of anger and sorrow, “you need to be stopped. I hope he rounds every one of you up and makes you suffer—before showing you the same measure of mercy you showed here.”

  Jericho stopped at the door to consider the man’s words. He knew this was part of President Blanco’s design, and he also knew that it would not be long until the populace rose up in unified protest against the Adjusters who safeguarded their most fundamental liberties.

  More concerning, however, was that Mr. Newman appeared to have counted on this particular eventuality—and that he had done so some time ago—when developing the portfolio of Tyrannis Adjustments which he and Masozi were now executing.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Jericho said with genuine feeling—having no illusions regarding how his words would be received—before leaving the house. After picking up Shu, he sped off toward his next stop:

  Aegis.

  Chapter XII: The Cavalry

  Masozi pushed the hover-bike to the maximum for two hours before finally settling down atop a rocky hill in the middle of the countryside. She was halfway to her next objective, but she knew she would need Eve if she was to have any chance of succeeding in this next—or any subsequent—Adjustments, so she carefully withdrew the data cable from her wrist-link and inserted it into Eve’s core unit.

  A few seconds later the wrist-link began to flash with a familiar sequence, and she breathed a sigh of relief when Eve’s avatar appeared on the wrist-link’s miniature screen.

  “Did we ditch ‘em?” Eve asked eagerly, snapping her virtual eyes left and right for what Masozi felt certain was comic effect.

  “We’re clear,” Masozi nodded.

  “Well, that’s a relief,” Eve said with an exaggerated sigh as she mimed the wiping of sweat from her brow. Her virtual elbow seemed to hit something and she yelped in annoyance before seemingly looking around the mini-screen built into the wrist-link. “But the digs are a little too cozy for my liking, Soze.”

  “It’s all we’ve got, Eve,” Masozi said as she carefully stowed Eve’s core unit in one of the hover-bike’s storage compartments near the stern of the bike.

  “Oh, it’ll be plenty for our next job,” Eve assured her before casting a resentful look at the four corners of the screen, “but it seems like I’ll actually be looking forward to my pad back on the Zhuge Liang before too long.”

  “What’s wrong with your…eh…lodgings on the Zhuge Liang?” Masozi asked in confusion. The technicians she had overheard talking about Eve’s mainframe gear had seemed more than a little impressed at the specs of the gear they had installed, and Eve had never mentioned finding any part of them unsatisfactory until now.

  “Oh, they’re big enough,” Eve admitted before her avatar shivered emphatically, “but they’re so…well, lonely. Back when I was with Big Daddy Wladdy, I’d never be more than a few minutes from interface with some major network—or a few of them—and I guess I got used to the company.”

  “Eve…are you saying the other networks are like you?” Masozi asked warily.

  Eve blinked in apparent confusion before bursting into a fit of giggles. “No, no, silly,” she said with a dismissive wave, “but I can see how you might think that given my word choice. No, it’s more like a constant buzzing sound—something that’s present, and you consciously know it’s there, but it also doesn’t take any of your attention—and once that buzzing’s gone, the silence is…well, deafening,” she finished with a shrug.

  “I had no idea you were so lonely,” Masozi said, biting her lip as she knew she had purposefully avoided several interactions with Eve because of how uncomfortable she had been with the whole idea of performing ‘maintenance’ on her digital companion. “I’m sorry I didn’t—“

  “Water over the circuit boards,” Eve interrupted cheerfully. “Besides, with a radiant personality like mine, you’d do well to limit exposure or you might go blind! Or,” she tapped her chin thoughtfully, “was the bit about blindness supposed to be part of a sex joke?”

  “Let’s talk about it later,” Masozi urged, “can you link up to my monocle?”

  A moment later, Masozi’s monocle sprang to life and Eve’s avatar appeared on it. “What kind of a question is that?” she asked, sounding genuinely offended. Her scrunched up expression, however, was nearly comical enough to make Masozi burst into laughter.

  Chuckling softly, Masozi re-fired the bike’s engines and flipped her helmet’s visor down. “Let’s get ready for our third leg here.”

  “Hold up, Sis,” Eve said as a stream of symbols ran across the monocle’s primary display too fast for Masozi to decipher, “I’m reading some major chatter on the local channels.”

  “Have the fleets engaged?” Masozi asked tightly, knowing that very soon the Rationem System was about to be subjected to the same martial law which President Blanco had installed on Philippa. The thought of those tens of thousands of Philippa’s citizens in their agony-filled reposes filled her mind, and Masozi’s grip on the bike’s throttl
e nearly launched the vehicle forward with enough force to unseat her before she got her emotions under control.

  “Not yet,” Eve said as her eyes snapped back and forth and her hands waved intricately before her digital body as she seemed to redirect the flow of the incoming alpha-numerics until finally isolating one particular stream and seeming to analyze it for a few seconds. A grin spread across her face as she said, “But it looks like the cavalry just arrived.”

  “What do you mean?” Masozi asked warily.

  “See for yourself; I’ll start at the beginning of the transmission, which just reached Rationem three minutes ago,” Eve said as she rubbed her virtual hands together in obvious anticipation, “this is gonna be great!”

  Her image was replaced by a man’s face, and Masozi instantly recognized the man’s uniform as the same style worn by the crew of the Zhuge Liang!

  “This is Captain Mike Kotcher,” the man spoke in an authoritative, yet horrifically gravelly voice which was clearly the result of major trauma to his throat—recent trauma, judging by the swelling and wound margins, “commander of the Corporate Security Vessel, Sun Jian, and survivor of the massacre at H.E. One. I’m here on behalf of Hadden Enterprises to re-open trade relations with the sovereign Star System of Rationem,” he explained, though the molten fury in his eyes bespoke motives far removed from simple trade negotiations. “If Rationem’s Proconsul and Supreme Legislative Authority wish to conduct good faith negotiations with Hadden Enterprises, my fleet of fourteen warships is prepared to rendezvous with Rationem’s SDF under a banner of truce. Additionally, in a gesture of our good faith, we are willing to lend aid to this system’s defense against any forces which Rationem deems to be here unlawfully. We will not, under any conditions,” he leaned forward, his murderous visage constrained only by what must have been supreme self-control, “approach the populated areas or industrial centers of the Rationem System without duly-appointed Rationem representatives present aboard our vessels, as we are not here to add to the tyranny being enacted upon Rationem’s people. We await your prompt reply—Kotcher out.”

  The image of Captain Kotcher was replaced by one with the Proconsul of Rationem, a woman in her late eighties with a nose that would not have seemed out of place on a hawk—and she had eyes to match, “This is Proconsul Medici; on behalf of Rationem’s people and, with the majority approval of her Supreme Legislative Authority, I welcome the representatives from Hadden Enterprises and look forward to a productive dialogue in the near future. You may rendezvous with our System Defense Fleet at your earliest convenience; we expect you will coordinate with Gonfaloniere Septimus as soon as a direct line of communication is established between your vessels.”

  Captain Kotcher’s face returned to the screen and he nodded perfunctorily, clearly having expected the reply he had just received. “Message received, Proconsul; we will coordinate with the Gonfaloniere at the earliest possible opportunity.”

  The screen cut out and Masozi felt her heart beating wildly within her chest as she processed what was taking place above her head.

  “Looks like the Rationem SDF is pulling back from their first line,” Eve explained as a three dimensional representation of the star system appeared on the monocle. “They’re moving to an optimal rendezvous point with the Hadden ships,” Eve explained as Masozi concluded that very thing, “new time to intercept with the enemy fleet: three hours twenty six minutes.” Eve gave Masozi a curious look as she asked, “Do you really think Blanco will do it now that the odds are closer to even?”

  “What’s the ship count on each side?” Masozi asked tightly.

  “The Virgin ships, which are accompanied by vessels from at least three other Star Systems, total twenty seven in all,” Eve explained as a breakdown of the hardware appeared on one side of the monocle’s screen. “The Rationem SDF has twelve ships while the Hadden-led reinforcements add fourteen of their own, making a total of twenty six.”

  “Dead even?” Masozi asked, naturally suspicious of anything resembling such a fortuitous coincidence.

  “Not exactly,” Eve said slowly, “Blanco’s fleet is half battleships or bigger—including the Alexander—while the Rationem SDF only has three ships of that class, but none of them come close to matching the Alexander. And the Hadden ships…” Eve said dubiously, “the biggest thing they’ve got is a Heavy Cruiser, the Sun Jian, with everything else Destroyer or smaller.”

  “But what does that mean?” Masozi asked, never having studied naval capabilities for ship classes. She knew that Battleships were big and Destroyers weren’t, but she had no way to gauge the difference between them with her limited frame of reference.

  “Well,” Eve said as she pondered it, “if they have the same tech specs, and are equally well-repaired, then Blanco’s fleet outguns the allied defense force by about three to one.”

  Masozi knew she would be unable to see anything with her naked eyes, but she turned her gaze upward into the night sky anyway as she wondered just how bad this conflict was going to get—and knowing that every moment of delay in her mission meant that things would only get that much worse.

  Gunning the hover-bike’s engines, she set off on the final leg of her Rationem Adjustments.

  “Incoming message from Gonfaloniere Septimus, Captain,” the man at Comm. reported professionally.

  “Put him on,” Captain Mike Kotcher rasped through his vocalizer, which had largely replaced the ruination which had remained of his original larynx after the massacre at H.E. One.

  He and a handful of his crew had barely survived that massacre by powering down their escape pods’ life support systems after lodging them into the crater of a moonlet in Chambliss’ rings not far from the now-destroyed corporate headquarters of Hadden Enterprises. Blanco’s fleet had left not long after the fleeing vessels carrying Hadden’s sentient resources had escaped the battered V-SDF’s range, and less than a day later a stealth vessel had come to collect the survivors from the wreckage.

  The experience had cost most of Captain Kotcher’s people their lives, but he had gotten off light: he still had one fully-functional lobe in his left lung, one kidney, and the better part of his digestive tract remaining. That his life had been saved by Hadden Enterprise’s most skilled surgeons—at a financial expense which was simply unfathomable to him—was due solely to the fact that he possessed the highest tactical acumen of any known Hadden naval commanders.

  The screen shimmered until the black haired, pale-skinned visage of a man in his early fifties appeared. His military costume—for that was all that Captain Kotcher could realistically call it due to its unnaturally bright colors, flowery designs, and what looked to be actual feathers adorning it—was pristine, but his face was covered in a sheen of sweat known only to those who have sat in the big chair in the minutes and hours before the shit truly hit the fan.

  “Captain Kotcher,” Gonfaloniere Septimus said with an aristocratic tilt of his head that made Kotcher’s scowl deepen, “I greet you in the name of—“

  “I suggest we dispense with the formalities,” Kotcher growled. “I’ve studied your tactical profile extensively, Gonfaloniere, and am confident that no communication will be required between our forces when shots are eventually fired. Deploy your vessels as you see fit and we’ll provide support in the inevitable gaps.”

  The Gonfaloniere blinked in confusion, which slowly turned to resentment. “Captain Kotcher, as the eminent military officer of the Rationem System it is my privilege—“

  “We can discuss whatever privileges you think you’re entitled to after we’ve defended their right to exist, Gonfaloniere,” Captain Kotcher interrupted, making no attempt to hide his disdain for these people and their ways.

  His great great grandfather—who had also been employed by Hadden Enterprises—had died in a Rationem internment camp following Rationem’s illegal arrest of all H.E. employees in its jurisdiction. If it had been up to Captain Kotcher, he would have let the whole fucking Star System burn at B
lanco’s feet as a belated funeral pyre to his forebear and those who had shared his fate. But he had received his orders regarding Rationem, and he would be damned before he let his personal feelings interfere with his duty to the Chimera Sector.

  And, naturally, the prospect of revenge against the tyrant who had tried to kill him—and had actually succeeding in killing those with whom he had served—was never far from his thoughts.

  The Gonfaloniere’s eyes narrowed, “You would have us spend our lives and weaken our military in this battle?”

  “Save your suspicions for when they might actually serve you, Gonfaloniere,” Kotcher rebuked. “We have a battle to fight—and you have a triad to deploy.”

  The Gonfaloniere’s eyes widened briefly before he schooled his features. “I have no idea what—“

  “We’ll provide flanking support, as well as a few surprises for these would-be oppressors,” Kotcher assured him. “So set up your favored formation just as you’d intended to do, Gonfaloniere, and be quick about it. In one hour and fifty three minutes, the Alexander’s fission cannons will be in range of our allied fleet—and then this prancing and pageantry will give way to the real thing, where the old axiom ‘the separation is in the preparation’ will be put to the test.”

  Kotcher slashed a finger across his ruined throat, and the Comm. officer cut the connection before the ponce who passed as a military commander in the Rationem System could retort.

  “Captain,” the Comm. officer reported as soon as the line with the Gonfaloniere had been severed, “the Fusi-Corp Squadron Commander is requesting tight-beam communication.”

  “Put him through,” Kotcher relented.

  “Captain Kotcher,” the Fusi-Corp officer said after his image appeared on the screen, “as the sub-commander of the four Fusi-Corp vessels attached to your command for this operation, I formally request assignment to the third point of the Gonfaloniere’s triad formation.”