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

by Caleb Wachter

  “Agreed,” Captain Charles said sourly. “Helm: charge the Phase Drive and set course for the People’s System of Harmony.”

  Chapter XXV: Preparation —> Separation

  “You’re doing great, Sis,” Eve cheered into Masozi’s earpiece as the workout clock wound down to sixty seconds remaining. She had taken to wearing the monocle during every waking minute—even in the shower, since it was waterproof—and through it she spoke with Eve more than with anyone else on the entire ship.

  Her arms churned in concert with her legs as she struggled through the burning agony she felt in every part of her body—every part except for her prosthetic leg, of course—but Masozi was determined to complete the full-body workout.

  The seconds refused to tick down on the workout clock displayed on her monocle, but Eve’s good-natured cheering—which had been accompanied by a short skirted outfit and virtual pompoms—actually did seem to drive Masozi a little harder as the last seconds ticked by.

  “Time!” Eve declared, and Masozi collapsed against the exercise station just as her vision had begun to narrow until all she could see was the now-completed countdown. “Way to go, Soze,” Eve said approvingly, “you burned three hundred more calories this time than during our last ride on this torture rack from hell. I’d say you’re ready to go!”

  Masozi could barely breathe, let alone speak, and she struggled to control her breathing amid the raging, fiery sensation which seemed to fill every part of her body.

  She felt a wet rag against the back of her neck, and looked into the mirror in front of her to see James standing behind her. He had elected to remain aboard the Zhuge Liang—an easy choice, since his only alternative had been to spend the next several months in a remote Hadden holding cell to keep from compromising Masozi’s mission—and Masozi had quickly bonded with him in the days that had followed.

  “That was impressive,” James said as he gave her shoulders a light rub, which sent warm, tingling sensations down her back as the cool cloth rapidly soaked heat away from her neck.

  Her breathing slowly came under control as James’ fingers subtly manipulated the muscles in her shoulders and upper back, and Masozi saw Eve roll her eyes as she said, “I’ll be back in my locker, babe. Just give me a shout if you need anything.”

  “Thank you,” Masozi wheezed.

  “No problem,” both Eve and James replied in near-perfect unison, prompting Eve to once again roll her eyes and mutter, “you humans and your hormones...” before disappearing from the monocle.

  Masozi removed the monocle and placed it in her workout suit’s front pocket. She checked the biometric readout built into the workout station on which she still sat and saw that she had beaten every female-held record in the ship’s data banks for this particular machine.

  “You’re pushing yourself pretty hard,” James observed as his hands slowly worked their way down to her lower back. “You need to save something for later.”

  “There won’t be a ‘later’ if I don’t push myself,” she retorted as he began to work out a quickly-formed knot on the left side of her lower back. After he had worked it out, she continued, “But this was the last of my workouts on this wretched thing.”

  “So it’s going to happen soon?” James asked, prompting Masozi to shoot him a hard look. “I’m not an idiot, Soze,” he said, having come to use the same nickname for her that Eve had seemingly created several weeks earlier, “I know that whatever it is you people are up to, it’s big. Lady Jessica wouldn’t transfer to a corporate warship unless there was a lot at stake, and due to the fact that there are all of three rooms on this ship I’m allowed to enter—my berth, the mess, and here in the gym—I’m pretty confident in saying this isn’t your standard corporate warship.”

  “I know one other place on this ship you’re allowed to go,” Masozi quipped, drawing a chuckle from James as he continued to work her lower back. “Besides, are you saying you’ve been on a lot of corporate warships?” she asked, prompting James to give her right hip a stiffer jab with his thumb as he worked his way down her body with his post-workout massage. She didn’t yelp, but she did allow herself a smile as he continued with the customary rubdown.

  “Come on,” he said seriously, “don’t treat me like I’m stupid. You’re going to assassinate President Blanco.”

  Masozi turned and shot him a searching look, but he kept his eyes focused on his work. She pulled far enough away that he had to stop, and said, “Why would you think that?”

  He sighed as his eyes reluctantly met hers, “Look…I know it’s not my place. I’m just…I don’t know…” he temporized.

  “No,” she said strictly, “finish what you were saying.”

  “I’m not saying he’s a great leader,” James said hesitantly, “but…is his death really what the Sector needs right now?”

  Masozi’s brow lowered as she considered how best to answer the question. “Did you know that he’s my cousin?” she asked.

  James nodded slowly, “I saw some resemblance, so I had my suspicions to that effect.”

  “Then trust me when I say that he is precisely the wrong person to have in power right now,” Masozi said flatly. “He would destroy everything that made this Sector great if it meant being remembered as the savior of whatever happened to survive.”

  James recoiled, “He can’t be that bad.”

  “He is,” she said sharply before reconsidering and muttering in resignation, “no…that’s not fair. I think he’s doing what he thinks is best, but have you seen his approval ratings lately? He has barely forty percent of the Sector supporting him with nearly as many diametrically opposed to his actions these last few months. The people have spoken, but he’s chosen to ignore them and that choice has already cost people their lives—that’s tyranny, James, and it needs to be stopped before it causes irreparable damage to our society. And even if I was going to take action against him, it wouldn’t be an assassination,” she bit out, having finally come to terms with what it was she had become since meeting Jericho, “it would be an Adjustment.”

  James seemed to consider her surprisingly impassioned speech—which had been surprising even to her—before gesturing to her sweaty workout suit, “Do you want me to finish up with the rubdown?”

  “Yes,” Masozi said before smiling playfully, “but not here.”

  He returned the smile, “Works for me.”

  “Your apprentice seems to be enjoying herself,” Lady Jessica said when she and Jericho saw Masozi and her new toy, James, move down the corridor ahead of them in the direction of Masozi’s quarters.

  “Everyone deals with stress in his or her own way,” Jericho replied with a shrug. If he said he didn’t feel at least some jealousy in the way Masozi seemed to thrive in James’ presence then he would have been lying, but he had long since abandoned any romantic notions involving her. Masozi was his partner in the most important Adjustment the Sector had seen in over a century, and he genuinely preferred if they kept an arms-length relationship since the tension seemed to sharpen both of their faculties.

  Of course, tension like that needed to eventually find a release but Jericho was hoping a few more sparring sessions would work that out of her system.

  “How do you deal with the stresses of our chosen path?” Jessica asked as they moved to the mess hall for their customary breakfast routine of going over relatively minor details of the Adjustment before them.

  “Is that professional curiosity,” Jericho asked neutrally as they entered the lift, “or are you building a profile on me?”

  “Perhaps both,” Lady Jessica allowed as the lift door slid shut behind them.

  “I suppose it’s never been much of a problem for me,” he said after a moment’s thought. “I employ a series of meditative regimens to keep my mind sharp, and these let me process task-specific information quite a bit more efficiently than most people.”

  “So you argue for the environmentally programmed side of the endless ‘nature vs. nurt
ure’ debate?” Lady Jessica asked as the lift door swished open and they made their way to the mess.

  Jericho smirked, “I hate chicken and was never overly fond of eggs. But if you’re asking whether or not a prefrontal cortex that fires eight times as many signals as the average human brain does helps or not, I’d have to concede that it plays its part.”

  “We are what we are?” Lady Jessica demurred as they picked up their trays and moved down the empty queue toward the self-serving stations.

  “Someone of your experience has to know that there’s more to it than that,” Jericho said after they had collected their meals and moved to their customary table. “But there comes a point where philosophy is less important than reality.”

  “I believe, as you seem to believe, that the goings on of this Sector have taken us well past that point,” she said as she placed her utensils in precisely the same places they had been arranged for each of their shared meals.

  “Why help us?” Jericho asked, his curiosity finally getting the better of him after weeks of working closely with her. “New Britain’s never made its opposition to corporate sovereignty any secret, and as the most recognizable representative of your world I can’t believe your values are wildly different from those represented in your government’s founding charter.”

  After finishing with the arrangement of her tray, Lady Jessica delicately draped a napkin in her lap—but Jericho had already sparred with the woman in the gym and knew just how deceptive her painstakingly cultivated veneer of docility truly was—and said, “While we are little better than most animals which share our portion of the sentience spectrum, we have transcended them in one important way. It is my opinion—one might go so far as to say ‘belief’—that it is this which makes us worthy of continued existence.”

  “I’ll bite,” Jericho said after doing precisely that with his bland serving of protein loaf, “what separates man from the beasts?”

  She flashed him a withering look with her large, perfect eyes and said, “Your gendered term for humanity notwithstanding, it is my opinion that legal process is all that truly separates us from ‘the beasts’.” She took a bite of her vegetables and made only the barest expression of displeasure as she swallowed it and continued, “Some argue it is our capacity for communication and the recording of information which sets us apart from other forms of life, but I have seen humans behave precisely as animals without ever being deprived of their communicative powers.”

  “So you believe in the rule of law?” Jericho asked skeptically. “That didn’t get the citizens of Rationem very far when they twisted the legal code in a way that permitted them to commit atrocities against Hadden employees.”

  “I do not place great value on the rule of law,” she retorted, “but, rather, on the processes themselves which enable such abuses as you refer to in Rationem.”

  Jericho considered her words and nodded, thinking he had taken her meaning, “So, while you do think that Blanco is in need of Adjustment, if Schmidt hadn’t had her shit together during your little audit then you would have…” he trained off pointedly.

  Without looking up from her next bite she said, “Of course.”

  “So you would have let a manipulation of that process—by a man who is secretly hostile to the process itself—diminish the Sector’s chance to remove Blanco’s tyranny?” Jericho challenged, glad for the opportunity to match wits with someone of her caliber.

  “Of course,” she repeated, dabbing the corner of her candy apple red lips with her napkin between bites, “if each of us takes such matters into her own hands based purely on personal preferences or values, we surrender to chaos and abandon the very mechanism which allows us to stand higher than our base nature would permit.”

  “So…” Jericho said dryly before taking a drink of water, “assuming the voters’ will gets subverted, who do the people turn to?”

  “To us, naturally,” she riposted. “That is the very purpose for which the Timent Electorum was founded, is it not?”

  “But if you, while possessing confirmatory powers on the execution of the peoples’ will, permit someone like Newman to manipulate the proceedings in a way that subverts the will of the people,” Jericho pressed, “how are those people to be served?”

  Jessica sighed, “A line must be drawn, Mr. Bronson, and for me that line rests firmly within the preservation of the process itself.”

  “Turtles all the way down, then?” Jericho quipped. “The system will support itself because the system will support itself?”

  “Allow me to be perfectly clear,” Lady Jessica said coolly, sliding her tray forward as Jericho finished his meal and did likewise, “I have yet to find sufficient evidence to support any move of which we are authorized against Mr. Newman.”

  Jericho took her meaning plainly enough, and while he was far from surprised to hear her make herself clear on the matter he would have been lying to say that he was disappointed—and mildly concerned—that she had drawn that particular line in the sand.

  “If you happen to have such evidence in your possession,” she continued into the growing silence, “I would gladly examine it, but without the presentation of such evidence I cannot allow any action to be taken against him. I am here to assist however I am best able with President Blanco’s Adjustment; I am not, nor have I any intention of becoming, a member of your team.”

  “Understood,” Jericho said as he reached into his pocket to produce her kill switch’s remote activator. He placed it carefully on the table and slid it across to her, “Our people gave it a look during your medical examination. They’re satisfied it is as you claim, and that’s good enough for me.”

  She looked down at it briefly before cocking her head, “If this is supposed to be some attempt to gain my support—“

  “I already have your support,” Jericho interrupted easily. “I don’t need to hold a gun to your head to know you’re as invested in this as we are.”

  Her eyes narrowed, “You place a great deal of trust in your medical personnel if you did not even expose it to intensive scanning.”

  Jericho was far from surprised she knew he had told them to give it a cursory, noninvasive look rather than a full forensic examination. Such high-end devices were usually built with sensors designed to detect such invasions, and Lady Jessica likely had remote access to those sensor logs using one of her many cybernetic augments.

  “If I didn’t trust them,” he said as he stood from the table, “I shouldn’t have brought them along.”

  Her lips twisted into a predatory smile, “Your point is well taken.”

  “Good,” he said with a curt nod, “I suggest we reconvene later to go over these details; my bunk is calling.”

  “Of course,” she said simply.

  “It’s bold,” Masozi said of the plan three days before the Zhuge Liang was scheduled to arrive in the People’s System of Harmony, “stupid, but bold.”

  “To which point do you direct your scorn, Masozi?” Lady Jessica asked archly.

  “All of it,” she said, leaning forward to examine two key points of their proposed insertion to the target area. Those points were described in great detail on the data pad before her, and it seemed to her that too much rested on the team overcoming them. “I say we blow down the front door, both of us in the Infiltrator suits, and Lady Jessica acts as the failsafe from inside the building. Even if they take us down she’ll still have a chance since they can’t keep her out of the room.”

  “What you propose is currently the second-most viable plan, but it is a metaphorical roll of the dice,” Lady Jessica said in her insufferably smug accent. “The primary plan provides a much greater probability of success.”

  “But your plan guarantees that at least one of us dies,” Masozi retorted. “I don’t care who that one is, either; if we go in knowing with absolute certainty that one of us isn’t coming back out then we’re no different from those fanatics that strap bombs to their bodies and detonate themselves—
along with whatever civilians might be in the area—when they get as close as possible to their targets.”

  “The virus we developed, using your genes as a template,” Jericho leaned forward, gesturing to Masozi, “will only affect you and President Blanco—and we can provide you with immunity prior to the mission. In short, all we have to do is get one of us into a room with the same air supply and he’s as good as dead.” He stopped for a moment, giving Lady Jessica an annoyed look as he said, “Poison isn’t exactly my favorite approach, but this time it just might be our best bet.”

  “They’ll discover whoever poisoned him within minutes—before which they’ll probably put the entire city on lockdown,” Masozi argued, knowing a thing or two about Presidential security measures after playing a part in several during her time in New Lincoln. “And what of the non-zero chance that he’s had his genes modified somewhere along the line?”

  “The virus,” Lady Jessica interjected with far more ease than Masozi cared to hear in the other woman’s voice, “which Hadden’s bio-tech expert aboard this vessel has developed, using material from your donated tissue specimens—material which you consented to give for this very purpose,” she added with a slight curl of her lip, “assures us that the virus will affect President Blanco’s central nervous system regardless of any genetic modifications which may have taken place.”

  “Fine,” Masozi said through gritted teeth, “what about the fact that Blanco’s got a dozen agents like Stiglitz acting as personal bodyguards—and that they, too, have had months to prepare for this particular event? How can any of us hope to get close enough to infect him with it?”

  Before Lady Jessica could argue, the door swished open and Lisa Steiner came into the room bearing a data crystal, “I’m sorry to interrupt; the encrypted file headers said it was urgent.”

  Jericho reached out and Steiner handed him the crystal, which he placed into his data slate and began to peruse the contents while the other members of the team waited in silence.