“Pops was always an idealist,” Benton sighed, “but me? Guess you’d say I’m more of a pragmatist. What the fuck good are ideals if ain’t nobody standin’ to keep ‘em alive?”
“I’ve had this conversation with your father,” Jericho said as he slowly incorporated what Benton was saying, “but I usually came down on his side of the fence.”
“I know, and I ain’t gonna hold that against you,” Benton said, clapping Jericho on the shoulder. “But before we go much deeper into that subject, let’s go see how your team’s doin’.”
Jericho nodded as he pushed his way up from the table, only to have a wave of vertigo rob him of his balance. When he regained his equilibrium, he found that Benton had gripped his upper arms and prevented him from a trip to the deck.
“You look like hell, bro,” Benton said wryly, “best you eat the sammich.”
Jericho nodded and picked up the grilled cheese on white bread. After swallowing a pair of bites, he sighed, “I’m too old for this shit.”
“Axe that shit right there, boy,” Benton scoffed as they made their way to the ship’s sickbay, “you in your prime.”
“How bad is it, Doc?” Benton asked of the dark-skinned woman after she exited the surgical suite where Masozi had been brought.
“The prosthetic is fine; give me two days and I can grow all-new tissues to restore the appearance of authenticity,” the woman replied in a beautiful, staccato accent which marked her as a native of PSH. “The other leg…” she said dubiously, “I will attend it to the best of my abilities, but I can offer no greater than a 30% chance of anything resembling a functional recovery. Amputation and vat-growth of a replacement limb would be my surgical recommendation, but in the absence of the victim’s consent I am obliged to do as much as I can for her original limb.”
“Can you revive her?” Jericho asked.
The doctor gave Jericho a brief look before turning to Benton with an expectant look.
“Pops handed him the keys to the other one of these ships,” Benton twirled his finger above his head. “For the purposes of his resources—including members of his team—just think of his name as a hair below mine on the corporate chain of command,” he said, squeezing his fingers together until only the smallest gap remained between them to signify the gap in their relative authority.
“I could,” the doctor replied after meeting Jericho’s eyes, “but that would be unethical given the amount of pain she will feel after awakening, and a nerve block would compromise my surgical exploration of the damage.”
“I think you’ll find that she’s fairly pragmatic about all this,” Jericho said, silently cursing himself for placing Masozi in a situation that appeared would take her second leg as surely as the Keno Adjustment had taken her first.
Benton snorted before nodding approvingly, “That’d be my girl.”
“If you are suggesting that I awaken her to ask if she would prefer I abandon my efforts to salvage her limb,” the doctor said stiffly, “then understand I am refusing that directive.”
“Fine, fine,” Benton nodded before Jericho could press the issue. “You take your twenty hours in the suite, and when you make your official prognosis I want it on my link no later than sixty seconds after it’s been logged in your system. Clear?”
“Yes, Director,” the doctor said, prompting Jericho to arch an eyebrow in Benton’s direction at hearing the doctor refer to him by his late father’s title.
Benton gave him a sour look after the doctor had re-donned her surgical mask and entered the surgical suite, where her team was preparing to operate on Masozi’s other leg. “Don’t give me that look,” Benton said shortly. “I ain’t got no say over the title that comes with Pops’ job, and I ain’t got no intention of rewritin’ his legacy. Can I assume Eve be in the Infiltrator?” he gestured to the now-open suit which had been left on the mobile bio-bed the medical team had brought to the shuttle hangar.
“To the best of my knowledge,” Jericho nodded, “but her core unit is in the shuttle.”
Benton nodded, “She ain’t gonna be happy to see me, that’s for sure, but we’re way past worryin’ about feelings at this stage in the game. I’ll need a few minutes alone with her to explain what’s up, after which I’ll hook up with you and we can go over our next move.”
“What happened to Jeff’s ship?” Jericho asked as Benton moved toward the badly damaged Infiltrator suit.
“He secured the Zhuge Liang and got out of PSH,” Benton said, turning to give Jericho an unexpectedly dark look, “but they took losses before skippin’ town. I sent him rendezvous coordinates when he reached the Phase Threshold, and if he knows what’s good for him he’ll be there when we arrive.”
The ship lurched beneath their feet and Benton stopped halfway across sickbay to check a forearm-mounted display which projected a short holographic image of an elderly man who Jericho immediately recognized as the captain of the Esmerelda Empatica.
“Report, Commodore,” Benton said calmly.
“The Alexander and a squadron of Destroyers have formed a gauntlet through which we’ll need to maneuver to reach the Phase Threshold,” the man reported with strict military precision. “We will break through it in sixteen minutes but that won’t be the last strike to land against our hull before we do so, sir. All other available escape routes present significantly greater danger than this one.”
“Carry on, Commodore,” Benton said with a nod before deactivating the hologram and gesturing for Jericho to be seated. “You’d best strap in and get that noggin’ looked at,” he said, indicating Jericho’s head before kneeling beside the Infiltrator suit and tapping out a series of commands on his high-powered wrist-link.
Jericho did as Benton suggested, and shortly after he had been seated a medical officer came over to examine his head—and his arm, which had begun to bleed once again, though the coagulants he had used aboard the Tyson had stemmed the flow quite nicely until then.
Benton stood from the Infiltrator suit after kneeling there for only a couple of minutes—during which time he appeared to do nothing but stand with his finger poised over his advanced wrist-link—and made his way back to Jericho. “Well Eve’s pissed about me fakin’ my own death, but her program’s surprisingly well-balanced—maybe even better than I left her,” Benton said with what sounded like extreme relief as he deactivated his wrist-link’s active suite of programs. He turned and tilted his head toward Masozi’s ongoing surgery, “Looks like Masozi’s been takin’ good care of her. A little girl-on-girl time never hurt nobody.”
“I’m going to ignore the obvious sexual innuendo,” Jericho winced as the med tech injected his scalp with a numbing agent. “Where’s Lady Jessica?”
“She’s fine,” Benton said noncommittally, “she won’t be harmed while on this ship, but I had to incapacitate her for operational security. As far as she’s concerned, she landed on the Zhuge Liang and got shot with a high-powered neural stunner as soon as you left the hangar. She’ll be your problem when she wakes up, but that she’s even drawing breath shows just how much I respect your judgment, Jericho.” Benton’s pink, albino irises seemed especially cold when Jericho looked into them as the previously bedridden man added heavily, “I’d just as soon have spaced her.”
“I need her for the tribunal,” Jericho shook his head. “But she’s been around the block a time or two; I doubt she’ll hold a grudge.”
“Yeah, the tribunal,” Benton rubbed his jaw, “about that…I need you to bring me up to speed.”
Jericho gave him an incredulous look that was only partially feigned. “The end times are upon us, it seems,” he said with a wry grin. “When Wladimir Benton needs to rely on me for information, the shit has officially hit the fan.”
“Cut the shit, Jericho,” Benton retorted in a nearly perfect mimicry of Jericho’s own oft-employed rebuke during their time together.
The two men laughed after a tense silence, and for a moment Jericho felt as though their prospec
ts had improved—then a fiery lance of pain ran across his scalp. He shot the technician a sharp look as she wordlessly began to work on his upper chest with a cautery kit and auto-suture device.
Jericho was genuinely uncertain if he should tell Benton about Shu’s mission, so he decided to skirt that particular topic until they were in a more private setting.
“Here’s what I know…” Jericho began, and for the next hour he broke down the situation as he understood it. Benton was uncharacteristically quiet, interrupting only to clarify a handful of points along the way as Jericho did, indeed, bring the big guy up to speed.
“And that’s it,” Jericho finished after divulging every bit of information—except for the bit about Shu’s mission, which he had covered with a lie about her deciding to stay in the Virgin System to serve as an embedded asset they might later call on.
“Obviously we knew most of that,” Benton said as he nodded slowly as he rested his arms on the armrests built into the chair in his quarters, where they had moved after Jericho’s minor surgeries had been completed. “But Newman? I wouldn’t have guessed that one. And that he was connected with Stiglitz suggests things are moving faster than I thought they were.”
“I’ve answered your questions, Wlad,” Jericho said, leaning back in his chair which was situated adjacent to Benton’s. “Now I need you to fill me in.”
“Only if you tell me the truth about Shu,” Benton countered easily.
Jericho hadn’t expected the lie to hold up for very long, but that Benton had already seen through it was disquieting. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes for several seconds before eventually saying, “We placed her aboard a freighter filled with the smuggled minerals you and I discovered in Tsushima and later tracked to Janus Angelo.”
“How’d you get her on?” Benton asked. “I’ve been shadowing you since your first stop at Far Point and my people are split down the middle on how they think you got Shu across.”
Jericho was mildly surprised to find that Benton had been following him for so long, but even more surprised to find that his movements could be so predictable. Then again, he supposed there was no shame in being predictable to someone of Benton’s—or Hadden’s—intellect and knowledge.
“We cold floated her across in a space suit,” he replied, causing Benton to chuckle.
“Looks like I lost the bet,” said the big guy—or formerly big guy—before nodding and activating his wrist-link. “Ok, I’ll tell you some of what’s goin’ down…but I can’t tell you all of it until you get back from the tribunal.”
The image of Stiglitz’ disembodied head appeared as a hologram above Benton’s desk. There was a huge stream of information—most of which was incomprehensible to Jericho—accompanying the head, but after navigating a few menus Benton pulled up a specific part of the report compiled by Dr. Maturin.
Jericho leaned forward and examined the findings more thoroughly. He had not had time to review the doctor’s findings because Maturin had not completed his examinations prior to Jericho’s disembarkation to complete the Blanco Adjustment.
“You got a copy handy of the Chimera Adjustment file Pops gave you?” Benton asked patiently.
“I do,” Jericho nodded, producing an encrypted data link which held one of a handful of copies which he possessed. All but one of the others was on the Zhuge Liang, for security reasons, and Jericho opened the file after inputting his security key.
“Good,” Benton said as he executed a few commands on his own link, “open the Lion file and run to the end.”
Jericho did as instructed, skipping through the mountain of data which had supported, and ultimately enabled, the Adjustment of President Blanco—who, following the Chimera metaphor, had been labeled by Stephen Hadden as the ‘Lion’ of the Chimera’s three heads.
“I’ve never been able to read the Dragon file,” Jericho said as he spun his link around so that Benton could see the password prompt at the end of the Lion file.
“That’s because Pops and I knew—or, I guess you could say we had faith—that you’d run into this stuff eventually,” Benton explained, gesturing to the chemical breakdown of the material which Dr. Maturin believed was at least partially responsible for Stiglitz’ untimely death. “He also knew that you couldn’t learn about the Dragon’s details—what little we’ve managed to gather—until you’d already Adjusted Blanco.”
“Why couldn’t I know?” Jericho asked, hoping to receive an answer which Stephen had refused to give.
“Can’t tell you that just yet, dawg,” Benton shook his head firmly, slipping back into his insufferable archeo-slang. “But here’s what I can tell you,” he continued as he pulled up another image on the holographic display, which appeared beside the report on Stiglitz’ autopsy, “this Agent, Stiglitz, was workin’ for the Dragon and he died without ever knowing it—but that ain’t the craziest bit.”
“What is the craziest bit?” Jericho asked irritably. He disliked being kept in the dark every bit as Masozi had seemed to dislike it back when he had withheld information from her during the Goat phase of the Chimera Adjustment.
Benton gave him a thoughtful look which lasted far longer than Jericho would have preferred, but eventually Hadden’s son shook his head, “I can’t risk it yet, Jericho. I’m sorry…I’ll answer all of your questions after the tribunal. Until then I can’t jeopardize our intelligence advantage by presenting the Dragon’s people—like Newman—with the chance to take that advantage away.”
“You think I’d break?” Jericho asked with a thinly-veiled sneer.
“I think the chances of you breakin’ from torture are about as remote as them infinite monkeys composing Hamlet,” Benton said evenly before shifting his gaze to the chemical inventory listed on Dr. Maturin’s autopsy of Stiglitz’ head, “but I ain’t talkin’ about torture. You’ve already seen what Eve could do with just a few weeks of preparation and study on the subject of extracting information directly from a more-or-less human brain. Think on that for a spot whilst you cogitate on my reluctance…”
The silence that followed Benton’s words was deafening as Jericho’s mind worked to process what the other man was trying to tell him. Between Benton’s archeo-slang and his unusually cryptic verbiage, Jericho was unable to draw a clear line to where Benton was pointing him.
“I will say that Pops’ dad—you might call him my gramps if you didn’t already know how I feel about family being an earned status rather than a hereditary one,” Benton added, referring to a long-held belief he had revealed many years earlier, “was closer to the Dragon than even I suspected until I received Pops’ highest security files after assuming control of Hadden Enterprises.”
Deciding against pursuing the line of dialog any further, Jericho segued to another topic which Benton had just raised, “Speaking of which, were you the one responsible for the Hadden Enterprises fallback locations being vacant whenever we tried to make contact?”
“You got it,” Benton nodded. “I didn’t round up all of the assets, but it was close to eighty percent.”
“That’s impressive,” Jericho said appreciatively.
“Ain’t no thing,” Benton said dismissively. “Had to pop a few uppity subsidiary VP’s who thought this was their chance to steal a slice of Pops’ hard-earned pie, but all told it was a lot smoother of a transition than I expected.”
“So the Corporate Security Fleet at Rationem…” Jericho nodded in understanding. He had assumed Captain Kotcher’s fleet of Hadden, Ghost Tech, Fusi-Corp and Virtu-Plaza vessels had been assembled on the order of one of those ‘uppity subsidiary VP’s’ who Benton apparently had to ‘pop.’
“Yours truly,” Benton nodded.
“How did you convince the other corporations to contribute so many warships to the cause?” Jericho asked with more than a passing interest in the answer.
“That bit was easy,” Benton chuckled, “I gave ‘em exclusive rights to the Rationem market for each corporation’s flagship products:
importation and sale of fusion plants and fuel for Fusi-Corp; adaptive software solutions for Virtu-Plaza—includin’ their newly-tested fighter control distributed intelligence architecture, which got quite the marketing push when they broke Blanco’s fleet; and Ghost Tech gets tax-free sales for their aerospace vehicle line.”
“You negotiated this with Rationem?” Jericho asked with a raised eyebrow.
“When I partially rescind Pops’ economic quarantine of their system next week, they’ll make a few concessions in the interests of political expediency—and so that they have somethin’ to bitch about to their voters next election cycle,” Benton said confidently, as though it was merely an afterthought. “I’m sure they’ll be all, ‘even with the old man dead and them sayin’ they ain’t fuckin’ us, Hadden still be fuckin’ us! Woe is us—woe is us! Damn the corporations!’ Pathetic-ass politicians,” Benton shook his head contemptuously. “You’d think they might come up with a new playbook in the last few thousand years.”
“Tried and true methods are precisely that for a reason,” Jericho observed. “For all our technological advances, fundamentally we’re the same people we’ve always been right back to the plains of Old Earth. We’ve got the same passions, the same dreams, and the same fears we’ve always had.”
“It’s too damn early for that kinda talk,” Benton quipped as a chime sounded, prompting him to tap a few commands into his wrist-link and sigh. “Looks like Eve’s askin’ for you—well, she be askin’ for someone and it sure as shit ain’t me judgin’ by the seventeen logic bombs she just dropped on my inbox. I can’t blame her, though; she’s always been high maintenance and I left her in the middle of some hairy stuff.”
“Where is she?” Jericho asked.
“I hooked what’s left of Masozi’s stealth suit up to a power outlet in the secured maintenance locker on Deck Three,” Benton explained. “The batteries was gettin’ low so I piped in enough juice to keep things pumpin’ until Masozi gets out of surgery and transfers Eve back into her core unit.”
Sic Semper Tyrannis: The Chimera Adjustment, Book Two (Imperium Cicernus 5) Page 46
