“Not a grilled cheese sandwich any more,” he muttered as he staggered out of the detainment facility. Once outside the medical technician worked on Jericho’s stump while he waited for Eve to arrive. When the Tyson finally appeared on the horizon, he rolled his neck gingerly and stepped out to meet it while muttering, “I am definitely getting too old for this shit.”
Chapter XXVII: Operation: You Lose
Masozi had finally realized Jericho’s plan, but try as she might, she found herself unable to muster more than indignation at being played. The clues had all been there but she had been unable to piece them together until just then, so she considered it her own fault that she had been manipulated.
“This was Jericho’s plan, wasn’t it, Eve?” Masozi asked with little uncertainty in her voice. “He wanted me to come here by myself.”
“Hold on a sec, honey,” Eve replied before disappearing for a moment. When she re-appeared she sighed, “Looks like it, babe; I’ve got a hidden audio file here with your name on it and a high priority level attached and it just appeared in the suit’s database. Have a listen.”
Jericho’s voice came over the speakers, “Investigator, I’m sorry about how all of this had to go. I want you to understand that none of what you saw, or thought you saw, was intended to insult you,” he explained heavily, with a hint of regret in his voice that Masozi was far from believing as genuine. “You don’t believe me, and that’s fine,” he continued and, though the statement wasn’t much of a stretch, Masozi felt her anger rise at his presumption, “but I only did what I did in order to ensure you could accomplish the mission if you chose to do so.”
“You bastard,” she spat bitterly. What am I, a bullet to be chambered, aimed, and fired? she thought with silent fury.
“You can still back out now,” he explained, and her helmet’s three-dimensional display of the coliseum zoomed in on her position before illuminating a path which led away from the building, “but after what you’ve seen, I sincerely hope you’ll follow through with this. Too many sacrifices have been made so that these people can be stopped—and I have reason to believe that Governor Keno is just the beginning.” He paused briefly before continuing, “It’s entirely possible that I’ve already been added to the list of lives these people have claimed. However, understand that I manipulated you specifically so that the risk would be as low as possible not only to you, but to the civilians of Abaca. If we had gone in together, Stiglitz and his team would have almost certainly stopped us…but now that I’ve drawn him out of position, you have one chance to strike back at the people who would destroy more than just our two lives. You need to tell Eve your choice, Investigator, and you need to do it quickly—our window is already closing.”
Masozi considered his words for several seconds before shaking her head. “I can’t back out now,” she muttered. At her core, Masozi had grown up wanting nothing but to serve the people of Virgin’s society and she had applied herself fully to that endeavor with as much effort as she could muster. While the Timent Electorum agency—if it could be called an ‘agency’—was a different calling from that of an Investigator, in the end they both attempted to serve the nameless, faceless masses of humanity who could not stand up to injustice and abuse for themselves.
“You sure about that, babe?” Eve pressed warily. “I’ve got a ‘yes’ and a ‘no’ file here, and once I open one of them the other will automatically delete.”
Masozi took a deep breath before nodding. These people had been responsible for the bombing at her apartment—she had known most of the people who had died in that explosion. Oddly enough, she gave little regard for the fact that they had tried to have her killed in that same explosion; the thought of them slaughtering innocent people just to get to her was enough to push her over the edge.
“Let’s do this, Eve,” she growled, promising herself that there would be a reckoning with Jericho. If I survive, she reminded herself, remembering Jericho’s suggested sixty percent capture probability for her chosen course of action.
“You got it, babe,” Eve said hungrily, “here’s the second part.”
“I promise that you’ll get a chance at whatever retribution you think I deserve,” Jericho’s recorded voice said evenly, “but for now you need to move through the access tunnels adjoining the Governor’s private dressing room. There will be guards outside in light body armor who your suit would let you easily overpower, but you need to avoid them. Eve has a set of protocols Benton developed that will buy you a window to enter the dressing room and wait for the intermission. When that comes and the Governor enters the room,” his voice turned serious, “you’ll only have forty seconds to Adjust her before the alarms go up and you’re trapped. Expect the Governor to be heavily augmented—even your suit will likely only even the odds in a hand-to-hand fight. Good hunting, Investigator,” he said heavily, “with luck, we’ll be seeing each other soon.”
“That’s it, babe,” Eve said, “looks like there’s six minutes until the concert kicks off, so we’ve got less than an hour to get in position.” Eve’s avatar then clapped her hands emphatically before rubbing them together in apparent anticipation, “Let’s see what these last protocols give us…”
A new route appeared on Masozi’s display, and she set off to follow it. Eve was silent while Masozi wound her way through the service tunnels beneath the coliseum, and even with several meters of concrete between herself and the concert above, the suit’s audio pickups easily registered the opening notes of the concert.
“Too much bass,” Masozi muttered after only a few measures of music had played, and she made her way to a sealed door. “Can you deal with this, Eve?” she asked as she looked for an obvious method to open the door.
“Sure can, sweet thing,” Eve replied, as though distracted by something. “Just put your right hand near the locking mechanism for a few seconds.”
Masozi did as she was instructed, and the lights covering the locking mechanism began to flicker in a seemingly random pattern. After a few seconds, the lights all turned green and the door swung easily open.
“Good work,” Masozi said unthinkingly. She’s just a computer program, Masozi reminded herself, it’s her job to do things like this.
“No problem, babe,” Eve replied, still clearly distracted by something before adding, “some of this suit’s subroutines are getting a little confusing. Sorry about the lack of witty banter.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Masozi replied dryly after stepping into the corridor and hearing the door close behind her.
“Was that sarcasm?” Eve asked suspiciously as she cast an accusing glare in Masozi’s ‘direction.’
“Of course not,” Masozi said exaggeratedly, causing Eve to burst into laughter.
“You’re a lot of fun, Investigator,” she said with a shake of her head, “I think we just might be kindred spirits after all.”
“Stay on task, Eve,” Masozi grumbled, feeling the corner of her mouth turn up in a lopsided grin in spite of herself.
They reached the final junction indicated on the map and Masozi stopped before peering around the corner. There was a pair of guards standing outside door about a hundred feet down the intersecting corridor, and Masozi leaned back around the corner just as Eve declared triumphantly, “Finally got it; all our systems are online, girlfriend. Calculating our rated hand-to-hand combat output now and…” she trailed off before grinning, crouching down and yelling victoriously at the top of her virtual lungs, “IT’S OVER NINE THOUSAND!”
“What does that mean?” Masozi asked in bewilderment, thankful to still have functional hearing after Eve’s unexpected outburst.
“Put simply,” Eve replied matter-of-factly as she resumed her upright stance, “your average civilian’s got a combat output rating of a hundred. A talented amateur wrestler, kickboxer, or other single-discipline hand-to-hand fighter would be somewhere between four and eight hundred. And a lifelong killer with the right gear and three dozen scalps on his b
elt, or a hall-of-fame professional mixed martial artist, would be somewhere between two and three thousand depending on their size, strength, speed, etc..”
Masozi had taken part in more than her share of amateur athletics, including some wrestling, before discovering a love of kickboxing as a young girl that had persisted all the way until she became an Investigator. But she simply hadn’t had time to train in a few years, so she guessed she would have been on the lower end of that group, near four hundred. “Where did you get that metric?” she asked, her curiosity—once again—getting the better of her.
“It’s something an Imperial military officer worked up,” Eve replied. “Benton discovered it while digging through some old archives he…umm…found?” she finished meekly before giving a short, nervous laugh. “Yeah…probably shouldn’t have said that. Anyway, the point is that those guys—even if they’re full-on badasses—won’t give us any trouble we can’t handle on the way out. You ready for your window?” she asked unexpectedly. “It looks like we’ll get a chance in about two minutes.”
“Works for me,” Masozi said, anxiety beginning to build in the pit of her stomach, “I’m ready when you are.”
“Great,” Eve said, “first thing we need to do is make like a spider and crawl on the ceiling until we’re right over the door. After we’re there, I’ll distract the guards and you’re going to need to drop in front of the door so I can crack open the lock. I should be able to open it up before they return to their posts, but it’s going to be tight as a virg—”
“I got it,” Masozi interrupted harshly as she placed her hand on a nearby concrete wall and tested to see if the gloves were once again supernaturally sticky, and found that they were. She crawled up the wall until transferring to the ceiling, acutely aware of just how unnatural the position was, and began to slowly move her way over to the door.
“Be sure not to block the light,” Eve cautioned, “the suit’s stealth systems are impressive, but even they have limits.”
“Right,” Masozi said, skirting one of the industrial light banks more widely than she had originally intended, and after nearly two minutes she was in position. “Ready, Eve,” she muttered, risking a glance down at the two guards who stood silent sentinel to either side of the door.
“Gotcha, babe,” Eve replied. “Diversion in three…two…one…now.”
There was a sound from a nearby corridor as a pair of voices echoed through the tunnel-like passages. They sounded very nearly drunk and they quickly came closer, causing the guards to give each other a neutral look before one of them silently set off for the source of the commotion with his weapon shouldered.
“I’m telling you,” a man’s voice echoed through the corridor, “I pressed the button for the restroom—I can’t help it if this stupid place’s equipment’s faulty!”
“You just wanted to get me alone in a dark tunnel,” a woman’s slightly slurred voice retorted knowingly. “You’re not that smart, Dennis.”
They rounded the corner—fondling each other in manners which were better left to private locales—and Masozi saw the guard who had moved to intercept them train his rifle on them before snapping, “Hands in the air, Citizens!”
The two quickly retracted their wayward hands and the man’s eyes went wide with fear while the woman appeared more amused than anything. “We got lost, officer,” the man blurted in self-defense as his hands reached for the ceiling. His voice squeaked so badly it was as though he had yet to breach puberty. “We were just trying to find the restrooms—I swear!”
Just then another pair of voices came from the corridor opposite the one where the guard had pinned the two to the wall at rifle-point. The guard still standing watch by the door quickly shouldered his weapon and made his way to intercept the newcomers, who appeared to have gotten themselves similarly lost.
“Now, babe,” Eve said as soon as the second guard had taken half a dozen steps.
Masozi dropped to the floor and made surprisingly little noise as she did so, landing in a crouch before springing up and placing her right gauntlet next to the door’s locking mechanism.
The second guard was just pinning his small group of interlopers to the wall when the door popped open. Masozi wasted no time entering the room before closing the door behind her as quickly, and quietly, as possible.
“Well done,” Eve congratulated. “Now we just have to wait for the Governor to show up and we can get down to business.”
“Drive this thing faster, Eve,” Jericho snapped through gritted teeth as the medic worked to suture the major blood vessels in his left arm.
“I’m sorry, Jericho,” she replied tersely, “but when you split my program in two pieces, this part lost more than half of my processing power. You did tell me to send my better half with Masozi,” she reminded him pointedly, “I can’t load balance the draws on the engines, anti-grav systems, and flight controls any more efficiently than this.”
“What’s our ETA?” he growled, knowing that Eve was performing far better than she had any right to do…which begged a question he would need to get answered at a later date as to just what exactly she was. It was clear by now that she was no simple sexbot program, or even a high-quality emotional companion product.
The painkillers the medics had given him were already wearing off, and he knew that if he took too many more then his mental faculties would be too severely compromised to be of any help when they arrived at Abaca. So he gritted his teeth and went through a series of long-practiced mental exercises—the same ones he had used to prepare for Stiglitz’s torture—even though he knew that with so much pain already at the forefront of his thoughts it would be difficult to achieve any measure of relief.
But Masozi had risked everything she had in order to play her part in his game, and he owed her his full attention should matters take a turn for the worse—an outcome which was more likely than he could have imagined prior to Agent Stiglitz’ confession.
“Forty nine minutes,” Eve replied promptly. “The whole city’s covered in a comm. blackout, Jericho; I can’t pierce it until we’ve got line of sight.”
“Contact the Zhuge Liang,” Jericho instructed her before amending, “wait, never mind…I’ll do it.” He strapped a headset over his ears and activated the secure channel to Captain Jeffrey Charles aboard the CSS Zhuge Liang.
“This is Charles,” his cousin’s voice came in loud and clear over the headset.
“Captain,” Jericho said, wincing as the medic slipped and accidentally sliced into his stump, “Abaca’s in comm. blackout for us, can you confirm?”
“We confirm,” Charles replied promptly, “the whole city went quiet not long after you were reported captured. We’re guessing they’ve switched off all the primary comm. relays.”
“We have to consider the possibility of a bomb going off in Abaca in about thirty minutes,” Jericho said grimly. “And if I’m right…it’s going to be a big one.”
“I thought the bomb was a decoy?” Captain Charles said in confusion.
“Mine was,” Jericho agreed, “but it looks like our adversaries have upped the stakes. Once the Adjustment’s made, I’ve been told that Abaca will die—followed by the rest of the colony.”
“Stand by,” Charles said before severing the connection. When the link was re-established nearly a minute later, his voice had taken a hard edge, “Our simulations are suggesting that given Philippa’s thin atmosphere, we’re probably looking at a bio-agent of some kind. A bioweapon development facility in the Liberty system was reportedly compromised six months ago, and it was widely-reported by the state-run media there—and here—that it was likely an act of corporate espionage. The stolen delivery system included a surface-to-air, high-altitude introduction device which could achieve full atmospheric dispersal in less than an hour.”
Jericho sat back in his seat and processed the meaning of this latest bit of news. “Clever,” he said grudgingly, “they deploy a weapon of mass destruction against their own peo
ple and then frame Hadden Enterprises for the crime…”
“It’s just the kind of thing that can turn public opinion at a pivotal moment like this,” Charles agreed darkly. “It looks like we stepped in it here, Cousin.”
Jericho gripped the arm of his seat with his lone, remaining hand and set his jaw. The pain in his stump was actually overpowered by his anger at not having seen this particular event coming. In hindsight it seemed so obvious: sacrifice Governor Keno—along with the entire Philippa Colony—in order to galvanize the Sector’s populace against the only people who were actually acting in the people’s best interests.
“We can’t look back,” he said, as much to himself as anyone else, as he knew that hindsight of that kind would lead to nothing but paralysis. “What are your simulations showing as possible containment methods available to us?”
“We’re working something up,” the Captain replied hesitantly, “but it’s not going to look good when we do it. We’ll have to make low orbit directly over the city and, if we make the necessary modifications in time, we can detonate four of our antimatter torpedoes in the atmosphere and burn the oxygen around the city—hopefully preventing a chain reaction that cooks Philippa’s entire atmosphere off in the process.” The other man took a breath that was so deep and loud, Jericho could hear it through the headset, “But to the cameras…it’s going to look like we’re incinerating a defenseless city, Jericho.”
“If it will save lives then do it—fuck appearances,” Jericho said coldly, momentarily admiring the complexity of the trap they had just walked into. “They’ve crossed a line, Jeff; this is no longer a game. If we don’t act to protect these people then apparently no one will.”
“At least we’ll be able to wait until we get confirmation of the bioweapon’s deployment,” Charles added confidently. “My people are already working on tapping into local security feeds; we should have access to most of Abaca’s systems as soon as we’ve made low orbit.
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