Jericho looked out the port window to see Masozi’s badly damaged Infiltrator suit roll off of a hover bike and collapse to the ground. He opened the exterior door before pressing his way to the cabin and running to the patch of ground where Masozi’s armored body lay while the embanked Hadden Security personnel continued to fire at the oncoming drones.
He slung her left arm over his shoulder and lifted her heavy torso from the ground, but was unable to stand fully erect under her limp, armored weight. A stray round from the enemy drones struck the ground mere inches from Jericho’s feet, and he strained to drag her toward the shuttle.
“I’m sorry, Jericho, but the suit’s leg servos are ruined,” Eve’s voice said via the suit’s external speakers.
“I can manage,” Jericho said through gritted teeth, though he had no idea how he could possible drag her up the lowered gangway. A moment later, one of the Hadden Security officers slung his rifle over his shoulder and ran to assist him.
With the extra help, Jericho managed to pull Masozi up into the cabin. Before he could get the door closed, Jericho felt a massive impact against his right shoulder that sent him crashing into the bulkhead.
He shook his head like a stunned bull but was unable to clear the grogginess which dulled his conscious mind. He was dimly aware that he must have suffered a concussion, but that realization was of little help as he struggled to reach the pilot’s console.
“Can you t…t…take the cont…trols?” Jericho slurred as he finally focused on his surroundings clearly enough to see that the security officer who had helped him drag Masozi into the shuttle was lying motionless at the base of the ramp with a ragged hole in his chest.
“I have already done so,” he heard Lady Jessica say a moment before the gangway rose up and sealed into the closed position as part of the Tyson’s hull. “Though I doubt I can perform combat maneuvers with only one arm,” she added coolly as he dragged himself toward the craft’s cockpit.
He felt the craft begin to rise before lurching violently forward, and a brief hail of impacts could be heard to the rear of the shuttle before a blinding flash outside forced him to cover his eyes reflexively.
“Impressive…your people deployed a powerful EMP as soon as we were out of range,” Lady Jessica said as she guided the Tyson away from the planet.
“How many drones are in pursuit?” Jericho asked groggily after a pair of impacts landed against the hull of the shuttle. He strapped himself into the chair and realized that it was the same chair in which Lady Jessica had sat—and that she had disconnected her life support devices in her haste to assume the pilot’s seat.
No sooner had Jericho secured his harness than the Tyson slewed sharply and its forward cannon fired three times in rapid succession. “None,” Lady Jessica replied matter-of-factly after returning the vessel to its original course and trajectory.
Jericho grabbed a tube of fast-acting coagulant, which he drove into the wound in his shoulder to stop the bleeding. Thankfully it appeared that whatever had hit him had become dislodged and there was no great geyser of blood as he painfully drove the tube full of chemicals into his wound. “Remind me never to stake you,” Jericho said before realizing his error and correcting, “I meant ‘cross’ you.”
“I understood you the first time,” she said as the craft continued its aggressive climb away from the watery world of PSH Prime. “Conserve your energy, Mr. Bronson; we may—“
A soft alarm sounded on the console in front of Lady Jessica, and Jericho shook his head vigorously before focusing on it. “That’s a Hadden transponder,” he said as soon as he recognized the numbers, and he felt a mixture of elation and trepidation as he said, “it’s the Zhuge Liang.”
“No way, Jericho,” Eve said through Masozi’s suit speakers. “They sent their verified Phase Drive status in their last transmission; even if they didn’t make the jump, the ship was at the Phase Threshold when they sent the message.”
“If true,” Lady Jessica said as she pulled up the incoming warship’s transponder location on the tactical grid, “they could not have returned to PSH Prime for at least another two hours—to say nothing of penetrating the Union Fleet deployed throughout the Star System.”
Lady Jessica manipulated the Tyson’s sensor array controls until she was able to establish a visual lock on the inbound warship—which was approaching an intercept point based on the Tyson’s course and speed that would force Lady Jessica to continue a maximum acceleration burn just to avoid being destroyed by the impact of docking with the fast-moving vessel.
When the shuttle’s visual scanners isolated the inbound warship, Jericho saw that it was indeed the Zhuge Liang. “I don’t know how they did it,” Jericho said flatly as he discarded the empty coagulant tube to the floor of the shuttle, “but that is the Zhuge Liang and it is here to collate us.”
“Don’t you mean ‘collect us’?” Eve asked pointedly, prompting Jericho to realize he had verbally erred yet again.
“No one likes a smart-ass, Eve—especially one that’s never wrong,” Jericho snapped irritably, surprised to hear himself do so and realizing he probably should take Lady Jessica’s advice and relax to avoid straining his concussed brain.
“Understood, boss,” Eve said with the barest trace of amusement in her voice.
The Zhuge Liang altered its course briefly, but before Jericho could ask after why he saw its forward batteries unleash their unbridled fury in a dazzling display of firepower before the vessel resumed its intercept course with the Tyson.
“They have engaged a nearby Destroyer, the Xerxes’ Wrath,” Lady Jessica reported. “Your vessel has…impressive firepower,” she said after calling up a tactical readout of the targeted Destroyer. “The Wrath’s primary drive unit has been knocked off-line; it is unlikely they will be able to pursue after we have rendezvoused with the Zhuge Liang.”
“Good shooting, Jeff,” Jericho said under his breath.
The minutes passed as the Zhuge Liang and Neil de Grasse Tyson came ever closer, and eventually Jericho heard the proximity alarm go off on the pilot’s console.
“This landing may be turbulent,” Lady Jessica said a moment before the craft lurched sideways and very nearly tumbled off its landing gear inside the warship’s hangar bay. Had Jericho not been strapped into his seat, he very likely would have suffered another concussion—at the very least—but as it was, only Masozi’s thankfully-armored body tumbled around the cabin behind him before the Tyson came to an abrupt halt following a loud impact with the hangar’s interior walls.
Jericho unstrapped himself from his chair and moved to check on Masozi. “How is she, Eve?” Jericho asked as he knelt beside Masozi’s armored form.
“She’ll be fine—no thanks to our rough landing,” Eve said sharply.
Lady Jessica moved back into the cabin after unfastening her own harness and seemed to ignore Eve’s outburst, which was fine with Jericho. He’d had enough conflict for one day.
“We’ll go get some help for her,” Jericho said as he stood and slapped the gangway’s activation button, causing the stepped ramp to lower to the floor of the hangar.
Jericho took two steps down the gangway before seeing a dozen Hadden Security personnel—in full battle gear—had surrounded the shuttle and were training their weapons on him.
“What’s going on?” Jericho demanded as he saw a second, smaller shuttle craft with a bright white hull nestled against the hangar’s far wall. “We have wounded in here that need medical attention.”
“Sir, please come with me,” a platinum blonde woman said from the rear of the group. She wore a Hadden jumpsuit which sported Research & Development patches—and Jericho was acutely aware that the Zhuge Liang had zero R&D eggheads aboard.
“Not until my people get medical assistance,” Jericho said as he slowly descended the ramp and struggled to find a logical explanation for what was going on. His analytical mind even briefly entertained the ridiculous notion that he had been transported int
o an alternate universe, but realizing the stupidity of the thought seemed to sharpen his thoughts fractionally as he fought to maintain focus.
“They will be seen to, sir,” the woman—who seemed vaguely familiar to Jericho—assured him, “but they must first be quarantined for security purposes. The sooner you cooperate with my directives, the sooner we can see to their needs.”
Jericho looked around the armed and armored security personnel and realized that even if he wanted to resist, he was completely unable to do so in his present condition. “Fine,” he growled, “you can place us under arrest if that’s what you mean to do, but I need answers.”
“You are not under arrest, but I cannot provide you with answers, sir,” the woman said, flicking two fingers lightly above her shoulder. A second later a stream of medical personnel flooded into the hangar with a pair of portable bio-beds positioned between them. “I can, however, take you to someone who has the answers you seek.”
Jericho held the woman’s gaze levelly, and found nothing in her countenance to suggest duplicity so he called over his shoulder, “Take care of Masozi, Eve.”
“Will do, Jericho,” Eve said through the Infiltrator suit’s speakers.
Nodding grudgingly, Jericho gave one last look to the assembled security personnel. “Fine,” he stepped toward the platinum blonde woman, “lead on.”
Without a word, the woman turned and led him out of the hangar. On the deck of the corridor adjoining the hangar was the Hadden Enterprises symbol—except this symbol was slightly different than the one he had grown accustomed to seeing on Hadden property.
The usual blue-white orb of a planet was present, as were the varied interconnected hands which seemed to support it. But in this version of the emblem there was an ominous, funnel-shaped mass beneath the planet which suggested a visual representation of a black hole or other destructive event. The implication suggested by the image was clear: Hadden Enterprises was all that kept the world from falling into oblivion.
It was a far more overt symbol than the one which Stephen had crafted a century or so earlier, and if Jericho’s addled mind was working properly it told him that this particular symbol was crafted by someone with considerably more arrogance than Stephen Hadden had ever possessed.
But in spite of the information he gleaned from the emblem, the most interesting aspect was the space where the ship’s name was supposed to have been.
Instead of the name ‘Zhuge Liang’ being displayed there, the name of this particular vessel appeared to be ‘Pang Tong.’
“There isn’t a ship named ‘Pang Tong’ in the Hadden Security Fleet,” Jericho said without breaking stride as he followed the blonde R&D officer toward the lift. “Whose ship is this?”
“Please follow me to the Shiyuan’s conference room, sir,” the woman said after entering the lift, “your questions will be answered there.”
Jericho complied, and after passing through corridors which seemed in every measurable way to be identical to those aboard the Zhuge Liang, they reached the ship’s conference room—which was located in the exact same place as the Zhuge Liang’s had been.
Jericho gave her one last look, knowing he had seen her before but unable to place when or where, and stepped toward the closed conference room doors. The doors slid apart just long enough for him to enter, and when he did so he found himself in a room that was pitch black and devoid of nearly all sound.
“Have a seat,” a heavily-distorted voice said from the other side of the room, and a moment later a blindingly bright floodlight turned on from the far end of the conference table situated in the room’s center.
Jericho shielded his eyes from the glare of the light and saw a lone chair at his end of the conference table. Placed before that chair was a curious item: a brightly polished, cloche-covered platter of the type used to present decadent meals to even more decadent people.
He decided against asking questions since it was clear that whoever had brought him aboard wished to indulge in some theatrics, so Jericho calmly sat down in the chair—but he resisted the urge to open the cloche.
“You must be hungry after four days in a box, Mr. Bronson,” the deep, distorted voice said with what sounded like smugness to Jericho’s ear. “Have a bite; the galley made it especially for you.”
Jericho considered refusing but the truth was that his curiosity was piqued in a way he had not known for decades. In nearly every situation he had found himself since agreeing to help Stephen Hadden undertake his ultra-secretive Chimera Adjustment, Jericho had been in complete control. His understanding of human nature—and, by extension, of most sentient psychology regardless of its genome—had allowed him to correctly predict every major choice made by the people who came into his crosshairs.
But after sitting in a conference room which was a perfect replica of the one aboard his own ship, the Zhuge Liang, Jericho found a sense of wonderment bathing his thoughts—of course, he knew that it was entirely possible that the concussion was the reason for that particular feeling.
With that thought in mind, Jericho reluctantly reached for the cloche and when he pulled it away from the platter his jaw actually fell open as his eyebrows rose in surprise.
Centered on the lavish platter was a polymer plate like one would find in any third-rate diner or bistro in the Sector, and on that round plate was his favorite meal: a grilled cheese sandwich.
“You ain’t the only one that knows some shit about human psychology,” the distorted voice declared with open amusement. “But before we continue with the business at hand, you’re gonna say it loud—and you’re gonna say it proud.”
Jericho clamped his mouth shut as he realized who it was behind the vocal distorter, and heard himself whisper the words without realizing he had said them.
“Louder, bitch!” the distorted voice roared.
Jericho raised his eyes to look straight into the harsh light at the far end of the table. “You’re the man, Benton,” Jericho said more forcefully, unable to believe what he was saying—or, more accurately, who he seemed to be saying it to.
The floodlight immediately snapped off and the softer ambient illumination of the conference room replaced it. It took Jericho several seconds to acclimate to the new luminosity, but when he finally did so he blinked several times as his brain failed to recognize what it was seeing.
Seated opposite him, with a hand resting on the table-mounted floodlight, was a man who bore far less resemblance to Wladimir Benton than he did to Stephen Hadden. When Jericho had last seen Benton, he had weighed over half a ton and had been confined to a specially designed bio-bed. But this man looked to weigh no more than two hundred pounds, and he was seated much as Jericho was seated in the only other chair to be found in the room.
His body was wrapped in an exoskeleton composed of bars and micro-servos, like those used in intensive musculoskeletal traction regimens generally reserved for people who had suffered extensive trauma.
The eyes, however, were precisely as Jericho remembered them with those congenitally pink irises that seemed to look past him instead of at him—just like his father’s had done. And when he spoke, it was with the same voice Jericho had come to know from his years of working closely with the Sector’s information apex predator.
“You’re Goddamn right,” Benton said with relish, and Jericho allowed himself to sink back into his chair in stunned silence as Hadden’s sole son—and legal heir to the family business—filled the conference room with the laughter of a man who had just achieved the greatest victory of his life.
Chapter XXXI: What…The…FUCK!?
“You’re not dead?” Jericho said disbelievingly.
“Nah,” Benton said as he reached up to wipe the tears of laughter from his eyes.
“So…the E.E.V.’s weren’t really going to destroy Virgin?” Jericho continued, his mind having gone suddenly numb as he sat there feeling like the class dunce.
“Oh, they was locked and ready to rock,” Benton assured hi
m, “but I knew you’d go get Eve’s gear if you got back in time, and if you didn’t get back in time…let’s just say I wouldn’t have let Virgin die like that no matter what Pops wanted from me.”
“Your father,” Jericho sat forward instinctively as he felt a surge of hope, “is he—“
“Dead as a doornail,” Benton interrupted severely. “He went up with H.E. One just like you thought he did, which is the only reason I’m here instead of back in my comfy bed. Feel me?”
Jericho nodded slowly as he considered the information he had just received. “You had an agreement with him…” Jericho concluded.
“Pops and I didn’t exactly see eye to eye on most things,” Benton nodded as he stood to his feet with the quiet whine of the micro-servos built into his exoskeleton, “but the one thing we did agree on was that an end needs to be put to all this shit—this ‘Chimera Conspiracy,’ as he called it. Unfortunately, that was as close as we ever got to a so-called consensus on anything.”
Benton walked toward Jericho, who noted the stiff movements of the other man’s limbs as he moved with the exoskeleton’s assistance. The gears in his mind began to turn once again, and he tried to piece together what had taken place.
“You’s a little rattled, bro,” Benton said bemusedly as he leaned against the table beside Jericho, “so I’ll help you out: when we split, all official-like, Pops agreed to support my activities if I agreed to take the helm when he died. Frankly, I didn’t need his money for most of what I did,” Benton said with a sigh, “but I was just as interested in getting to the bottom of this mess as he was, so I ain’t ashamed to say I called in the cavalry from time to time—and Pops always delivered at least as much as I asked for.”
“Why would you agree to that?” Jericho asked after a few seconds before realizing the answer. “Your plans for how to deal with this conspiracy were mutually incompatible,” Jericho concluded, “and neither of you would back down from what you thought needed to be done.”
Sic Semper Tyrannis: The Chimera Adjustment, Book Two (Imperium Cicernus 5) Page 45
