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

by Caleb Wachter

  Seizing the brief window, she sprawled her weight back as far as she could while reaching for the man’s shoulders. Once she gripped him, she squeezed as hard as she could and was gratified by the feel of his metal endoskeleton giving beneath her armored fingers.

  Crow-hopping again—since the man’s grip on her leg was, as yet, unbreakable—she tried for a daring maneuver. She flipped her body back so that she landed on her shoulders, dragging him forward with her before he instinctively released his grip. But she had drug him too far into her trap for him to escape, and she drew her left leg toward her chest as fast as she could. As soon as it was in position, she snapped a vicious up-kick into her foe’s neck and felt a sickening crunch as her boot broke his neck at a horrifying angle just above the chest.

  The man collapsed to the ground in a motionless heap, and Masozi cycled through her remaining rounds until coming to the last cartridge loaded in the hand cannon’s cylindrical magazine.

  “Who sent you?” she demanded, leaning down beside his motionless body to see his eyes burning hatefully in her direction.

  “You’re too late,” he said defiantly, his voice clearly originating from a damaged vox implant in his neck. “No matter what you do now, you’ve lost.”

  Just then there was an explosion behind her, and Masozi turned to see the corridor which contained Carter’s quarters was filled with leaping flames and smoke. Before she could even look back to her fallen adversary, the flames from the corridor leapt out into the Green Zone, where she now stood.

  In a breathtakingly horrifying display, she watched as the breathable gases within the station lit in a slow, deliberate chain reaction which soon filled the entirety of the cylindrical habitat station’s Green Zone.

  Alarms were drowned by the roar of the flames surrounding her, and Masozi looked down to see the layer of flesh blacken on her fallen foe’s skull, revealing even more machinery beneath as his skin shrunk and receded.

  She felt cold fury well up inside her at the apparent sabotage of the station’s atmosphere, and before she could even think the matter through she brought her left boot up and stomped down on the metal skull with the glowing red eyes. The first stomp failed to flatten it, so she delivered a second, a third, and a fourth before she was certain she had indeed slain him.

  “Take the head,” Eve urged as she reappeared on the HUD, “I might be able to get something out of it back on the ship.”

  It was almost like Masozi snapped out of a trance as she looked down on her dead foe. “There’s still one more of these bastards,” Masozi growled, her angry breaths coming hot and heavy as the flames began to die out after consuming the oxygen within the largest open area of the station.

  “He can’t have gotten far,” Eve said confidently, “you probably blew his leg off.”

  Setting off at a run, Masozi quickly found her way back to the intersection which had been hit by the grenade from which Eve’s superior reflexes had saved them. The damage to the bulkhead was even worse than she remembered seeing at first glance, with the bulkhead three meters beyond the first one having also been reduced to a molten pile of slag in a nearly perfect circle two meters across.

  “There he is,” Eve declared, and Masozi turned to see the armored figure slowly crawling down the corridor. Masozi moved toward him to find that the leg she had hit with the AP round did seem to have been rendered useless, but his hands were fine—this was made obvious when he swung a large bore rifle around and fired a round at Masozi’s trunk.

  If Eve helped to augment Masozi’s reflexes, she genuinely could not tell as she swayed to the side and felt the distortion wave of the rifle’s round knock her head back as it sliced through the air just a few millimeters from her helmet.

  Bringing her own weapon around, she trained the hand cannon on her target and fired the last remaining round in the five-shot cylinder.

  This round was dangerous, and she had opted not to use it earlier precisely because of the nature of their environment. But the fire, which was nearly out even on the far side of the Green Zone, had eliminated the risks of using it now.

  The pistol bucked even less than it had done with the previous shots, and found its target just above the crawling assassin’s waist. On impact, the contents of the round splashed against the ceramic alloy armor.

  For a brief instant, nothing seemed to happen. Then the armor began to hiss as the previously stable plasma belatedly ignited and caused a shower of sparks and molten armor to pour forth like a fountain of yellow slag which quickly consumed the agent’s entire body.

  Shocked at the round’s efficacy, Masozi could only stare for several seconds at the pile of ash and cooling minerals. That pile had, mere seconds earlier, been an augmented agent who was at least as dangerous as Governor Keno had been.

  “Let’s go get that head and GTFO, Sis,” Eve said, startling Masozi and breaking her from her shocked reverie.

  “GTFO?” Masozi asked.

  “Aww, c’mon,” Eve rolled her eyes, “do I really have to say it?”

  Masozi shook her head as she turned toward Carter’s quarters, “No…I guess not.”

  Her fears were confirmed when she saw that his quarters did indeed appear to be the source of the explosion which had triggered the massive fire inside the station, and she had no doubt the augmented agents had seen to his death.

  Seeing she had no reason to remain on the station, she did as Eve had suggested—a grizzly task which she found only slightly less repulsive due to the mechanical nature of the agent’s crushed skull—and set off for the shuttle.

  As Masozi walked through the Green Zone she saw that only a few of the smaller, more delicate-looking plants appeared to have been destroyed outright by the fire. The rest seemed to have been damaged, but she had learned as a child just how durable flora could be.

  She also saw only a handful of human bodies littered throughout the area, though the alarms continued to blare and the power grid seemed to be failing in certain parts of the Green Zone.

  Surprisingly, Eve appeared to have successfully uncoupled the Tyson from its moorings and Masozi moved toward a pair of security guards who wore lightly armored suits and carried sonic weapons.

  “Hands up!” the first one barked through his helmet’s vox.

  “I’m not the enemy,” Masozi said, holding up what was left of the augmented assassin’s—or, more likely, agent’s—head, “he was.”

  “Ma’am, I don’t know who you are,” the guard said, fingering his trigger and causing his weapon to whine up to maximum charge, “but this station is under lockdown—no one gets in and no one gets out until the Security Council’s had a chance to sort out what happened here.”

  “They’re going to need help evacuating at least some of the wounded,” Eve suggested, “maybe the Zhuge Liang could lend a hand somehow?”

  “I’ve got a ship waiting for me,” Masozi explained, gesturing to the corridor leading to the Tyson’s docking tube, “they’ve got highly skilled medical personnel and facilities that can accommodate a few of the worst-injured victims of this terrorist attack.”

  “It’s a trick, Jimmy,” the other guard said quickly, “she’s the one who set off the firebomb; we should put her down.”

  “Hold on, Alex,” the first one said slowly before tightening his grip on the rifle and aiming it at Masozi’s head. “What’s the name of your ship?” he asked tightly.

  “The Zhuge Liang,” she replied. “It’s a corporate warship built by Hadden Enterprises, and it’s been loaned to me by Stephen Hadden himself to help with my mission.”

  “Hadden’s behind this?!” Alex, the second guard, blurted angrily. “You’ve got some nerve, declaring who you work for after the shit you people pulled at Philippa!”

  “Stand down, Alex!” the first guard, Jimmy, barked but the other guard would have none of it.

  Before Masozi could react, the second guard fired his rifle at her and the sonic wave knocked her head back and sent her reeling to kee
p from falling to the floor.

  Another pair of shots went off, and by the time Masozi’s eyes were back on target she saw that Jimmy, the first guard, had fired his weapon at Alex. The second, incensed guard now lay writhing on the floor. After kicking his companion’s rifle away, Jimmy the guard turned to face Masozi and moved toward her, keeping his rifle trained on her visor—which, she only then realized, was cracked.

  “A second shot, at this range and at maximum,” he said as his rifle whined up to maximum charge once again, “will finish off what’s left of your visor. Even if you kill me, you’ll asphyxiate without your pressure suit.”

  Masozi held her hands before her deliberately, “I’m not your enemy.”

  “Prove it,” he snapped as his companion rolled to his knees but was still unable to get to his feet.

  Masozi hesitated, knowing the Mark which had been for Carter’s Adjustment—an Adjustment which had been uncalled for, though he had still died to serve the agents’ plans—was inside her breast pocket.

  “I can pop open the breastplate so you can get the Mark,” Eve offered, “but at this range, and at that rifle’s rated maximum, if he fires he’ll turn your vital organs into pudding.”

  Masozi hesitated before nodding, “Do it.” There was more at stake here than a single guard’s, or Adjuster’s, life; the Sector was soon to fall into all-out civil war if she and Jericho didn’t Adjust President Blanco. With the undermining which the Sector’s most powerful President had already conducted regarding the Timent Electorum, she knew that simply killing him wouldn’t be enough.

  The breastplate popped open just a second after a coif inflated around her collarbones, preventing her pressurized air supply from escaping the Infiltrator suit’s helmet.

  “I’m an Adjuster,” she said, keeping her hands before her, “and I came here to execute an Adjustment.”

  The guard’s posture, which had tensed upon seeing the breastplate move, froze for several seconds. “You were here for former Head Administrator Carter,” he said, rather than asked.

  “Yes,” she nodded, “and I’ve got his Mark inside my breast pocket, if you’ll let me reach it.”

  Time seemed to stand still as he stood there with his weapon—which was now smartly trained on the partially opened breastplate—unwavering. Eventually he said, “Slowly.”

  She did as instructed and, while she retrieved it, she noticed that the other guard, Alex, appeared to have regained his feet and was watching the affair from within his unreadable helmet.

  When her gauntleted fingers finally fumbled the Mark out of the nearly skintight pocket, she produced the flat, star-shaped piece of metal with the all-seeing eye emblazoned at its center. She pressed the button on the bottom of the device and a holographic image of Mr. Carter sprang to life above it.

  “So you killed him, along with God only knows how many others?” Alex sneered, but he made no attempt to retrieve his rifle. “You’re a monster!”

  “Check his quarters,” Masozi said urgently as Eve automatically closed the breastplate. “He had a quality surveillance system installed, which he activated just before I left his apartment. If I’d wanted to kill him, I wouldn’t have needed to blow up his quarters.” She gestured to the hand cannon on her hip and the ruined, metal skull of the agent she had killed, “Every round from my weapon was spent against him and his cohorts—they were the ones who killed Carter with that firebomb.”

  “Don’t believe her, Jimmy!” Alex pleaded.

  “It’s ‘James’ when we’re on duty, Alex,” the other guard snapped before returning his focus to Masozi.

  “Every minute we spend arguing over this is another minute that people are dying, and one that I can’t have the Zhuge Liang’s doctors working to help the victims of this attack!” Masozi said urgently. “You’re in a position to save lives here, James,” she added intently, “disaster protocol says that once the source of the emergency has been identified and contained, you have to shift your attention to the wounded.”

  “What would a Corpie like you know about protocol?!” Alex snapped.

  Chafing at being referred to by an epithet like ‘Corpie,’ which was generally reserved to the worst kind of self-serving corporate employees—the kind that were accused of crafting slave-labor contracts, or practiced discrimination against certain behavioral patterns—Masozi set her jaw and said, “I was an Investigator before I…”

  The words genuinely caught in her throat, though she couldn’t tell exactly why. She resolved herself to push through and spit the words out, regardless of how they might taste as she did so, but she knew she would need to get a better handle on things in the near future.

  “I was an Investigator,” she repeated, “before I became an Adjuster. I’ve never worked for the corporations,” she said archly.

  “You just said you’ve got a warship outside!” Alex cried accusingly. “Can’t you even keep your stories straight?”

  “I’ll go with you,” James said decisively, “we’ve already wasted enough time. If you’ve actually got doctors and they’ll help here, I’ll escort you back to your ship. If you don’t…” he waved the tip of his rifle toward the corridor, “it’ll be a short ride for both of us.”

  “Agreed,” Captain Charles nodded on the com-link after Masozi had returned to the Zhuge Liang at gunpoint, “we’ll send medical teams over to help with triage, but Kowalski stays here to prep the suites for incoming critical cases.”

  A few minutes after Masozi put the Tyson down in its customary spot inside the Zhuge Liang’s shuttle bay, medical personnel and supplies were packed onto the small craft and it departed with a full load of relief workers led by Dr. Maturin, who stopped at the ramp to ask, “How is your leg?”

  “It’s fine,” Masozi assured him after Eve popped open the suit’s faceplate.

  “Good,” the doctor nodded before entering the craft, prompting Masozi and the guard, James, to move into the corridor so the shuttle bay could be depressurized.

  James willingly surrendered his weapons to the ship’s security officers, and while he was searched Masozi climbed out of her armor and was able to fully assess the damage done to it.

  Amazingly, it appeared to be even worse than what the suit had suffered during the Keno Adjustment. It seemed odd to her that the alarms during her second fight in the suit seemed significantly more subdued, so she asked, “Eve, were the suit’s sensors and other monitoring devices working properly?”

  “Yep,” Eve replied cheerfully as her avatar popped onto Masozi’s monocle.

  Masozi ran her fingers over the mangled left gauntlet’s knuckles before appraising a trio of weapon hits on the Infiltrator’s torso—each of which looked like it had come dangerously close to penetrating the suit’s armor. “The damage is worse than I thought,” she said, shaking her head as a shiver ran down her spine when she realized just how close she had come to dying in the opening moments of the fight.

  “I tweaked the sensors,” Eve explained, “plus, a few more of the suit’s defensive mechanisms were online this time around. The damage looks worse than it actually is, relatively speaking, since the suit was quite a bit beefier than the last time we took it out.”

  “Can you take it to the shop for repairs?” Masozi asked.

  “Sure thing, sis!” Eve nodded, offering a comical salute before the suit closed, prompting James to jump in surprise. When the suit walked off, James’ eyes were fixed on it until Eve directed it around the corner and out of sight.

  “Heck of a ship you’ve got here,” James drawled, and Masozi turned to see that he was strikingly handsome—so much so that she was rendered speechless for a few seconds before slamming her jaw shut with an audible ‘click.’ He had golden hair that nearly reached his shoulders with a tightly-braided beard of the same color; a jaw that looked like granite would chip on it; and sky blue eyes that were more striking than any other part of his exquisite, perfectly symmetrical face.

  “It is,” Masozi nodded in
agreement.

  James looked at the emblem on the floor which represented Hadden Enterprises: the blue orb of a planet with a host of interlocking hands of varying skin colors, ages, and genders beneath it, suggesting that those hands were all that held the world up.

  “So how does an Investigator from Virgin end up ordering the captain of a corporate warship around?” James asked, and Masozi snickered as she considered how best to answer the question.

  “That’s a long story,” she sighed.

  James looked back at the now-empty shuttle bay emphatically, “I’ve got the time if you do.”

  She considered the offer for a moment before nodding and leading him to the mess hall, where she spent the next few hours unwinding and revealing as much as she felt was safe to reveal to James, while Eve saw to the suit’s immediate repairs.

  Chapter XX: Free Will

  “Thank you for the pick-up,” Jericho said after boarding the very same shuttle which had collected them upon arriving at Virgin Prime.

  “Of course,” Tera St. Murray inclined her head fractionally as the craft lifted off from the empty patch of ground in front of the small, abandoned mine entrance where they had stashed the hover car. In Jericho’s experience, one could never be too frugal when it came to conserving resources, because one never knew when those resources might come into play in the future. A case in point was the small, abandoned cabin near the lake where Shu and he had landed.

  “Are your injuries severe?” St. Murray asked, gesturing to Jericho’s passel of leather belts which were cinched tightly around his lower ribcage.

  Jericho shook his head and gave Shu an approving look, “I had a good medic.”

  “In any event,” St. Murray continued, producing a data slate and hard-coded crystal, “I have completed the inquiries you requested.”