Instead, he closed his eyes and summoned long-familiar imagery to his mind which he often used to ignore the otherwise debilitating effects of pain.
I’m too old for this shit, he thought to himself bitterly when a series of beeps and blips from the shuttle’s instruments broke him from his trance.
Several hours later, the shuttle began to shake. It was barely perceptible at first but, after finding a quiet corner of his own mind which had allowed him to ignore the worst of the pain in his arm, Jericho had remained attentive to the subtle vibrations which accompanied an unpowered atmospheric entry.
“Here we go,” Eve said, prompting Masozi to lean forward in her seat—though Lady Jessica had clearly felt the subtle vibrations just as Jericho had. “This will be a little bumpy; our trajectory wasn’t perfect and I can’t activate the shields or engines just yet or we’ll be detected by the fleet’s sensor grid.”
A tactical display on the shuttle’s forward panel showed the positions of a dozen warships in orbit of PSH Prime, and Eve had identified the sensor net which those ships had cast between them with a series of web-like lines which seemed completely impenetrable.
But, like nearly every other seemingly impossible obstacle Jericho had overcome in his career as an Adjuster, it was their reliance on high technology which had made Blanco’s people vulnerable to their admittedly simplistic entry method.
The shuttle would take some damage due to the less-than-perfect entry angle, since its hull was not designed with unshielded atmospheric entry in mind as anything but a last resort, but the vessel had been skinned with a layer of insulator material which should protect it at least long enough for them to get to the surface.
“Once we reach an altitude of seventy thousand feet, we can engage maneuvering thrusters,” Eve explained as the vibrations became worse and the external thermometers began to slowly climb. The increases were initially measured in tenths of a degree, but it was not long before entire degrees were ticking off as the number continued to climb. “Until then you’re going to have to make like monkeys in a barrel, kiddos.”
Jericho gave her avatar a withering look, but Eve seemed not to notice as Masozi assisted with a few of the shuttle’s early engine startup sequences.
Over the next few minutes, Jericho’s mind was filled with memories of his ad hoc exit from Eve’s E.E.V. just a few minutes before it had burned in up Virgin’s atmosphere. Rather than shy away from the memories, he embraced them as he massaged his crippled arm and remembered how Eve had expertly positioned this very shuttle so deftly that when she had ‘caught’ him with it, he had somehow managed to roll into the cabin under his own power.
The temperature inside the shuttle’s cabin continued to rise until it became uncomfortably hot, and when he opened his eyes Jericho saw flames through the forward windows which were burning at the bow of the craft.
“Everything’s good; just hang tight,” Eve said as if on cue, and Jericho wondered just how good her senses were while within the Tyson. There had been much debate over how best to use Eve during this particular operation, but it had been decided that leaving her in the shuttle would be far less than optimal. So Masozi had reluctantly brought Eve’s core unit, and would transfer her to Masozi’s Infiltrator suit.
Every time Eve’s program transferred from one system to another, it required her to essentially cut pieces of herself off in order to ‘fit’ into the new data environment. But this was not the case when transferring her out of her core unit, where backups of her previously removed ‘pieces’ would be re-integrated into her program prior to the transfer. But if she transferred from the suit to a wrist-link, her capabilities were significantly impaired—and even if she then transferred back into the suit she would experience a similar degradation, so it was always best to transfer her directly from her core unit whenever possible.
More time passed as the deceleration gee-forces mounted, and Jericho closed his eyes to ignore the events taking place around him. The truth was that he was easily the least-qualified pilot aboard the shuttle, so he had no problem with sitting out this particular bit of stress.
His mind slipped into the comfort of nothingness, during which time seemed to lose meaning. He was broken from his reverie by Eve’s voice presaging a sudden lurch, “We’re in; engines are ‘go’ and I’m activating what’s left of the Tyson’s stealth suite.”
When Jericho opened his eyes he saw a picture-perfect blue sky above them and a thick layer of clouds below.
“Well, the good news,” Eve said after a few minutes of powered flight, “is that we’re going to be able to make it there just fine. But when we lift off again, there’s not enough left of the heat sinks to enable a stealth escape.”
“That’s just par for the course,” Jericho said dismissively, “history shows it’s never all that difficult for a determined individual, or team, to infiltrate a high-security target and achieve their aims.”
“The difficulty of escape is often an order of magnitude more than that of executing the mission,” Lady Jessica agreed.
“Which is why terrorists ignore the possibility of escape altogether,” Masozi finished flatly.
“And it’s why tyrants are quick to call them cowards,” Jericho nodded as he looked out the window. “But there’s nothing cowardly about willingly giving your life for something you believe in.”
“There’s also nothing brave about giving up halfway through the job,” Masozi fired back. “Life is precious; anyone who ignores that fact is just weeding themselves out of the evolutionary tree.”
“True enough,” Jericho allowed as they entered the blanket of clouds and continued toward their target. “Though powerful ideas can, and usually do, live on long after their originators are turned to dust by the inexorable force of entropy.”
Chapter XXVII: Gaining Position
The Tyson settled down in a box canyon outside of the city where the planned Adjustment would take place, and the trio disembarked as soon as Masozi had transferred Eve back into her core unit.
To Jericho’s impressed surprise, it seemed that Masozi had learned far more about Eve’s maintenance protocols than he had initially believed possible. After the unfortunate incident involving Eve in sickbay, Masozi had distanced herself even more from Jericho than she had done previously. But she and Eve had been integral to the planning of the Adjustment they were about to undertake, and his respect for her—and for Eve—had only grown stronger in recent days.
It took them several minutes to disembark the shuttle, and when they did they heard the sound of inbound hover engines. “Right on schedule,” Jericho said approvingly as a hover barge came into view over the edge of the canyon and slowly settled down beside the Tyson.
The door to the barge’s bridge opened and Tera St. Murray stepped out onto the narrow walk-around deck which ringed the front of the craft. The barge’s planks descended to the ground, and Jericho saw Masozi begin walking toward the barge in her Infiltrator suit, while the suit which had originally been designed for him followed close behind her.
“There are four of you?” St. Murray asked in a prickly tone.
“No,” Jericho said before amending, “not really, anyway.”
“Jericho Winchester Bronson,” Eve’s voice blared through his suit’s speakers, “I think I’ve had it with your close-minded—“
“I’m sorry, Eve,” he interrupted, suppressing the urge to roll his eyes, “can we at least get everyone onto the barge before any ensuing drama takes place?”
“Well…fine,” Eve sniffed before turning his suit back around and walking stiffly and deliberately up the plank.
When Eve had successfully brought his suit to a halt near the front of the barge’s open cargo deck, Jericho turned to Lady Jessica and activated the Tyson’s visual cloaking grid. It worked well enough to blend the craft into the surroundings, though there were obvious visual distortions when one looked closely at it.
Lady Jessica threw her leg over the hover-bi
ke and activated its engines before turning toward him, “In case the opportunity does not present itself in the future, I will say that I have not been this energized by an assignment in half a century.”
“Glad to hear it,” Jericho nodded, “we’ll be counting on you.”
“And the Sector,” she said as the bike lifted slowly off the ground, “will be counting on you.”
She gunned the throttle and the hover-bike rocketed away so fast that it was difficult to track it as the vehicle shot up and over the edge of the canyon before disappearing.
“I don’t trust her,” Masozi grumbled after Jericho had boarded the barge.
“I understand your reservations and even agree with some of them,” Jericho said grimly, “but you were in every planning session with me. Trust is less important than need—and we do need her. Even Eve agrees that Jessica’s involvement is crucial to the mission’s success.”
“I still don’t like it,” Masozi said stiffly.
“Neither do I,” Jericho allowed as the barge lifted up off the ground and turned toward their eventual destination, “but there’s not much about this situation that a reasonable person would like.”
“How are you doing, Eve?” Masozi asked after closing her helmet’s face shield.
“Five-by-five, bakeshop,” Eve replied, her avatar waving happily from the corner of her suit’s HUD. “We should be good to go with remote access up to about three hundred meters, even with the interference caused by the building’s materials and energy grid.”
“That should be plenty,” Masozi mused as she ran through a series of checks on her suit’s systems. The damage she had sustained during her previous mission had been repaired by the ship’s technicians, and Eve had fine-tuned the virtual interface for her in the event that Masozi should be operating solo for an extended period of time.
With nothing but the movement of her eyes and the setting of her jaw, Masozi could flip through the suit’s various control systems from one end to the other in less than three seconds. She could never equal Eve’s alacrity at the task of balancing the Infiltrator suit’s systems, but Masozi was confident that she could manage without her virtual sister in the event things took a turn for the worse.
“Are you sure this is going to work?” Masozi asked worriedly. “I don’t want to lose you again, Eve.”
“The plan will work, Sis,” Eve hastened to assure her. “If they really can sneak us into the insertion point—and if Jericho’s psych profile for President Blanco is accurate—we’ll be golden.”
Masozi watched as Jericho, after finishing a cigar on the cargo deck of the barge, opened the door to the bridge and moved inside. Though Eve was still mounted inside Masozi’s suit—or installed on, or inhabiting, whatever the proper word was—and was operating Jericho’s via remote, Masozi still had the clearly irrational feeling that by standing outside with that suit she was somehow supporting Eve.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said,” Eve broke the silence after a few minutes, “you know, when you talked about priorities and how people use them to determine courses of action.”
“Ok…” Masozi said in reply, uncertain where Eve intended to take the conversation.
“I just wanted to say that I think that might have been the most important piece of advice I ever received,” Eve explained. “Big Daddy Wladdy gave me an overriding need to have fun, since it was the best way he could promote stability in my otherwise…well, in my inherently antagonistic and destructive personality matrix.”
“You’re not destructive, Eve,” Masozi shook her head. “That capacity is part of who you are, just like how anarchy and wanton destruction are part of my own primate ancestry, but you’ve gained control over that part of yourself.”
“Not complete control…” Eve said darkly.
“Nobody ever gets complete control of herself,” Masozi retorted. “But if you weren’t constantly struggling against those base impulses and urges, you’d be just another computer program.” Her lips quirked into a grin as she added, “That wouldn’t be fun for any of us, would it?”
Eve giggled and nodded, “I guess you’re right, Sis. I just…I’m just glad we’ve been able to talk as much as we have. I wanted you to know that.”
“I know that and, strange as it is for me to say this: the feeling is mutual,” Masozi assured her. “But it’s a little early for that kind of talk, isn’t it?”
“You’re right,” Eve agreed. “This is a good plan, Soze; it’ll work.”
“We’re all betting our lives that you’re right,” Masozi said before looking darkly over her shoulder, “or I suppose I should say we’re all betting that he’s right.”
“Everything has been arranged,” Tera St. Murray assured Jericho after providing him with reasonably detailed outlines for her assigned role in their mission. “The breathing gases are generated via catalytic reactions, which are driven by pre-charged gas pressure, therefore the system is silent. The insulation and passive heat sinks will provide for ninety hours of occupancy prior to bleeding thermal energy through the outer casing itself, though I suppose it goes without saying that once the pod’s door is opened the unit will be rendered inoperable.”
“I understand; that will be plenty of time,” Jericho nodded, knowing he would only be inside the device for a little over seventy hours.
“This is an interesting plan,” St. Murray said with a hint of approval, “one which I could never have devised alone.”
“We’re fortunate you were able to procure the casket,” Jericho said graciously.
“You were quite thorough in describing the possible methods you would employ,” St. Murray said dismissively, “it was a small matter to secure the necessary equipment for each of them once you provided sufficient funding to do so.”
“The money was the easy part,” Jericho assured her. During Schmidt’s impressively thorough presentation of their finances to the tribunal, she had managed to include nearly a hundred small cash accounts in the assets they would be permitted to use for this Adjustment. Those accounts had been scattered throughout the Sector, and Lady Jessica had been convinced by Schmidt’s argument that they had, indeed, been intended to be used to supplement the Zhuge Liang’s material needs during its deployment.
Even so, the accounts within PSH had been drained completely by the spending spree he had authorized St. Murray to conduct on their behalf. It was only by virtue of Ms. St. Murray’s frugal disbursement of the funds those accounts had previously contained which had allowed her to secure every piece of gear they would need for the upcoming Adjustment.
“Be that as it may,” St. Murray allowed, “the pieces appear to have been arranged. The board, as many like to say, is set.”
“It is,” Jericho nodded. “How long until you drop me off?”
St. Murray flicked a glance at the pilothouse’s chronometer, “Two hours, six minutes and forty seconds.”
“Sounds good,” Jericho nodded as he rubbed his aching arm. “How many of your people are here with you?”
“Only three,” St. Murray replied, tilting her head toward the man at the pilot’s console, “him, his father, and his sister. They are friends of my family, and have business dealings in PSH which were integral to inserting your casket into the building.”
“Good,” Jericho said approvingly, “have you already arranged for your travel off-world after this is over?”
“We will remain on PSH within a submarine habitat located several thousand kilometers from the site of the Adjustment,” she said with a shake of her head. “With Blanco dead, my work with your organization will come to an end.”
Jericho had expected as much, though he had privately hoped she would change her mind. He had killed her brother, after all, and that was not the kind of thing a person was likely to forgive—and it was something one never, ever forgot, no matter how extenuating the circumstances might have been.
“Your assistance has been integral, Ms. St. Murray,” Jeric
ho said slowly, offering his good hand graciously. “We couldn’t have done this without you.”
She sliced a disdainful look at his hand before once again meeting his eyes, “I am aware of that.” She pointedly made no attempt to accept his hand, which he had fully expected. But Jericho knew that sometimes, making such an offer of appreciation was more important than whether or not it was accepted. “Good hunting, Mr. Bronson,” she said coolly before turning toward the front window and studiously ignoring him.
Taking his cue, Jericho moved to the barge’s interior storage compartment where he prepared for three days in the casket.
Several hours later, Masozi helped move Jericho’s Infiltrator suit into a storage compartment deep in the bowels of the hundred foot long hover barge. There she, and Eve, waited while the barge’s contents were unloaded. She had checked in with Jericho shortly before he had entered the modified life pod, which had been hidden within one of a dozen crates that the barge delivered to their target destination.
It was inside this life pod—which Jericho had taken to calling a casket—where her senior Adjuster would wait for nearly three days as Masozi and Eve prepared to play their respective parts in the Adjustment.
“How’s the temperature inside, Eve?” Masozi asked for the third time in the last hour.
“Everything’s looking good,” Eve said patiently, “his tissues shouldn’t begin to deteriorate before things get rolling.”
“Good,” Masozi grudged. She knew her part to play would be important, but she found herself angrier and angrier at her relatively peripheral role in the Adjustment they were about to execute. She didn’t want to vent her frustrations on Eve, but she also knew that there would be few alternatives in the coming days since she too would need to remain hidden until it was time to act. “How’s the power supply on Jericho’s Infiltrator suit?”
Sic Semper Tyrannis: The Chimera Adjustment, Book Two (Imperium Cicernus 5) Page 40
