Masozi lowered herself into a fighting crouch, which Jericho mirrored, and she quickly began to circle to her right. She fired a jab which Jericho ducked beneath—clearly inviting a knee to the face, which she deigned to oblige—and then the big man made a series of practiced weaves from left to right and back again as Masozi lashed out with a left hand, a right kick, and a right cross.
She missed with each blow but, just as Jericho was about to snap a kick into her right thigh, she leapt back using her left leg to provide most of the motive force. After doing so, she found herself fully clear of Jericho’s brutal attack which had been aimed at her thigh.
“Better,” Jericho grunted after regaining his balance and launching a new wave of attacks, most of which were punches and elbows that Masozi blocked or dodged with long-practiced ease. Her years as an amateur kickboxer were paying greater dividends than she could have ever hoped they would when she had taken up the sport as a young woman—originally having done so with no intention other than to find a physical outlet for stress.
Jericho threw another leg kick, and this time Masozi switched her weight while pulling her right leg out of the kick’s path. The old man’s leg struck her left leg, not nearly as hard as it would have done to her right, but it was enough to make him grimace as it made an audible, cracking sound as it struck the ceramic plating of the leg. That plating was covered with a layer of Masozi’s own skin, which made it completely indistinguishable from the real thing at a glance—but easily distinguishable when an ordinary shinbone struck it full-force.
“Better…” Jericho growled again as he moved back, adopting something of a defensive stance which Masozi began to attack with a series of quick, low-power attacks aimed more at making him move his hips than actually hurting him.
But Jericho had too much experience, and he seemed all too glad to accept the pitter-patter of jabs and crosses aimed at his jaw. When her thinly-gloved fists struck his face it was like they were hitting a chunk of carved wood, but she knew everything about Jericho was natural. During his entire life he had steadfastly refused any treatments which would leave him with any artificial components, so Masozi knew that his skull was simply more well-built than most men’s—and she had plenty of experience cracking her fists against men’s thick heads, primarily owing from her competition in several open gender kickboxing and wrestling tournaments.
Jericho swept his foot toward her right leg as her balance briefly left her after she missed with a left hook, and it was all Masozi could do to keep from falling to the ground yet again.
While they were on the feet, Masozi had a reasonable chance against Jericho, but when they were on the ground there was simply nothing she could do against his larger size, greater overall strength, and decades of experience.
She managed to keep her feet beneath her, but Jericho thundered a body kick into her liver which made her limbs briefly feel as though they had lost all of their vigor. She gasped for breath, but found none as Jericho cracked a right cross into the side of her head and pushed a kick at the inner thigh of her new leg.
Masozi nearly overbalanced from the clever attack sequence, but managed to keep her feet beneath her as she made a split second decision. With her stance at that very instant, she could either try to fire a left kick into Jericho’s body or she could step back before launching a right knee at his incoming chin.
She opted for the latter, and even Jericho seemed surprised when she drove with her left leg and slammed her right knee into his jaw after her body rose nearly two feet off the ground.
His eyes briefly went off-target, and Masozi knew she had the advantage. The pain in her gut, and the weakness in her limbs, seemed to vanish as she went on the offensive with sharp, cracking punches and elbows aimed at Jericho’s head.
Nearly every attack struck home and, while Jericho could have opted to grapple with her, he had agreed not to do so for this particular session. So he backpedaled, blindly blocking with his arms and the occasional knee, but Masozi was simply too fast for him. She hammered a left hook into his gut and then brought a right elbow into his left eye. She followed those with a left knee aimed at his chin, which he managed to partially avoid as he moved his head out of the knee’s path, but she still landed the blow on his shoulder.
As they neared the wall—where several pieces of stationary equipment were neatly stacked—Masozi cocked a left hand which she intended to deliver directly to his ear so she could put the mind-bending old man down for the first time since their sparring sessions had begun.
Jericho unexpectedly planted his feet and fired a right hook at the same time she delivered the overhand left, and his punch was a fraction of a second quicker to arrive on target.
Masozi’s world exploded into stars, and she was vaguely aware of crashing into something metal before even those stars winked out and she was unconscious.
Jericho staggered to a knee as Masozi’s potentially bone-crushing left hand connected with his upper chest, driving him into an exercise bike just after his own punch had connected with the dark-skinned woman’s jaw with a wet crack.
She fell forward, her body’s momentum no longer directed by her will as she crashed into a treadmill which, thankfully, broke her fall far better than the bike had broken Jericho’s. Still, he shook the cobwebs from his mind and went to her side to see if she was all right.
There was a trickle of blood at the corner of her mouth, but he saw no teeth missing and her relatively hard landing had seemingly not cost her anything but a bruise to her forehead. Jericho was briefly envious that her beautiful, black skin would hide the bruise far better than his own, pasty skin would ever do.
“Good job, Masozi,” he grunted as he looped her arm around his neck and moved toward the door which would lead them to the Zhuge Liang’s sickbay. “Another couple days of practice and you’d have had me.”
She groaned something unintelligible—in a clearly defiant tone—but Jericho knew precisely what she had meant.
“I’m sorry,” he corrected, knowing that they were still not on a first-name basis—a status which had been entirely her preference, and had also been entirely understandable given how he had manipulated her prior to the Keno Adjustment, “I meant to say ‘good job, Adjuster’.”
She grunted something and her eyes began to focus just as they entered sickbay. The looks on Drs. Kowalski and Maturin’s faces could not have been further from each other. The former’s expression was a scrunched up scowl, while the latter’s was one of muted amusement tinged with curiosity.
“This is the fourth time this week,” Dr. Kowalski snapped as she directed a nearby nurse to help her get Masozi into a bed.
“I’m not going to refuse her requests to help with her rehab,” Jericho said evenly—a reply which he had made three times previously during their prior visits to sickbay following Masozi’s discharge from the Zhuge Liang’s medical ward. “And, frankly, if she wasn’t asking for it I’d probably be demanding she accept it. We’ve got too much in front of us to waste what little time remains before we arrive at our destination.”
Dr. Kowalski pointedly ignored Jericho, focusing completely on Masozi as she began a quick neurological assessment as the former Investigator’s consciousness slowly returned.
“What about you?” Dr. Maturin asked after Jericho had helped Masozi into the bed, with the assistance of Dr. Kowalski and the nurse, and began to turn to leave sickbay.
“I’m fine,” Jericho said dismissively, rubbing his jaw with his right hand to find that hand come back covered in blood. Only then did he realize that the vision of his right eye was beginning to narrow.
He blinked forcefully, finding that his right eye had begun to swell. Dr. Maturin’s grin returned as he picked up a cryo-suture device and gestured for Jericho to lie down on a nearby bed.
Jericho sighed with audible frustration as he complied with the doctor’s advice. After he sat down on the bed, the doctor began to clean his eye—which apparently had a two inch long
cut to the side of it, with a golf-ball sized knot above that—and Jericho grumbled, “I’m getting too old for this shit.”
Chapter III: History Lessons & A Cry For Help
Not long after Dr. Maturin had finished his work on Jericho’s eye, Jericho and Masozi left the sickbay in silence as they made their way to the galley. Jericho knew that Masozi was still angry about his having deceived her during their previous mission, but he also knew that a person with a psychological profile like hers would be unable to hold onto a grudge for too long.
He knew from his conversations with her that she was a pragmatist, which was why she had accepted her role in Jericho’s mission—a mission which had been personally handed down to him by Stephen Hadden. Director Hadden had, prior to his death at the massacre of H.E. One, enlisted Jericho’s aid for a task so dangerous, so secretive, and so important that only a handful of people even knew about it. And the truth was that even Jericho did not know everything which Stephen Hadden had known.
So secretive was the operation that not even the Zhuge Liang’s captain, who was Jericho’s cousin, knew the nature of Jericho’s mission. Only Director Stephen R. Hadden, Hadden’s son—who had abandoned the family name prior to his death—Jericho, and possibly Hadden’s personal assistance, Shirley Schmidt, knew enough of the mission to possibly compromise it.
Jericho knew it was time to include Masozi in that group, so he wordlessly led her to the galley where they each collected a tray of food which they took to the far end of the room before sitting opposite each other.
The waves of indignation and anger pouring off Masozi were almost palpable, though she hid those feelings better than she had done just a few days earlier. Still, Jericho didn’t have time to coddle her; they were nearly at their first stop, which meant she would need to be briefed quickly so that she would be ready for the tribunal.
“You know that we’ve accepted the Adjustment for Han-Ramil Blanco,” Jericho said matter-of-factly as he stabbed his spork into the lumpy pile of starch—which was likely supposed to be mashed potatoes but failed spectacularly in terms of texture and taste.
“I know that you were going to kill my cousin, Han-Ramil Blanco, even before we met,” Masozi fired back as she skewered the only genuine article on the platter of food: sliced carrots with string beans. “And I know that you involved me in this because you think I can be of some use in that effort. What I don’t know is how you think I can help,” she said hotly after chewing the mouthful of vegetables. “You’ve been doing this for quite a while, and it’s clear you don’t lack financial support,” she added with a pointed look at the warship’s galley.
Jericho nodded, finding he was glad that she had driven straight to the heart of the matter. “It’s true that Blanco’s Adjustment—“
“Assassination,” Masozi cut in harshly, “let’s not cloak what we’re going to do in verbiage that makes it seem less barbaric. I may have accepted the title of Adjuster, but that doesn’t mean I need to hide behind it.”
Jericho met her deep, brown eyes with a piercing, unyielding glare from which she almost imperceptibly recoiled. He wouldn’t have noticed her do so had he not spent so much time with her and studied her mannerisms so intently but, after seeing he had achieved the desired effect, he relaxed fractionally and shook his head.
“No, it’s not an assassination. An assassination suggests personal motive, either on the assassin’s part or on the part of the one who directs the assassin. Firstly,” he explained as he bit into the protein loaf—which somehow managed to be even less palatable than the fake mashed potatoes, “we don’t get paid—or, at least, we’re not supposed to profit financially. We’re public servants,” he said as he swallowed the pasty, flavorless protein, “and we don’t have any personal stake in initiating an Adjustment. That process is entirely up to the voters.”
“You had a stake in Governor Keno’s death,” Masozi retorted, “you even admitted that you wish it had been you, rather than me, who ended her life.”
Jericho shook his head evenly, “A prior connection to an Adjustee doesn’t preclude an Adjuster from executing the public’s will. In fact, it’s generally preferable for someone with at least a distant connection to the Adjustee to be directly involved in the Adjustment. Such a connection compels the Adjuster to take a longer, harder look at the Adjustment than he or she would if it was a simple assassination.”
“Is that why Infectus level Adjustments can only be carried out by a local Adjuster?” Masozi asked, her inquisitive nature blooming before Jericho’s eyes and overshadowing the previously gloomy, sullen mood which had dominated her affect since their training sessions had begun.
“That’s part of it, yes,” Jericho confirmed, “probably even most of it. But the truth is we don’t know exactly why many of the protocols which are in place for the Timent Electorum were put there. There’s no official author of record for the First through Fifth Rights,” he explained, “nor is there a complete list of contributors, which is markedly different than the rest of the founding Rights of the Chimera Sector’s society. There are examples of similar—more poorly worded and less direct in their intent—initiatives which had been prevalent in human societies throughout our species’ history, but the First Right is the only recorded instance of the citizenry’s right to physical protection from abusive government claiming supremacy above all other rights.” Jericho snorted softly as he recalled something Tera St. Murray had said after showing them to her literally underground information nexus, “Even freedom of information exchange, and freedom of individual expression, come second and third in our society; every other representative republic or democracy in human history places those rights higher than we place the First Right.”
“Then how did we get these protocols?” Masozi asked challengingly, to which Jericho shrugged since he knew it was impossible to answer.
“You know the story as well as I do,” Jericho said, “that not long after the Great Collapse, the founders of the Sector’s government came together in the Manticore System to discuss the particulars of how we should self-govern following the Imperium’s sudden—likely enduring—absence and the conclusion of the bloodiest period of the Forge Wars.”
Masozi nodded, clearly having paid attention during history class as she said, “They were supposed to have worked out the First through Fifth Rights during that meeting, but the Liu Bang ambushed them before they could make the totality of their deliberations public.”
Jericho nodded slowly as he, too, recalled the tale which every school child had learned. “The Liu Bang was the Imperial Dreadnought assigned to command the Imperial Fleet elements which were on this side of the wormhole when it collapsed. No one knows exactly how Imperial Admiral Yuan discovered the location of the meeting, or why he waited nearly a decade after his previous appearance to appear at the Manticore System. But, when he did find out about it, he was able to destroy nearly the entire fleet of ships sent to convey the various System leaders to the secret meeting site. The remaining ships of the seedling Sector Government, however, destroyed the Liu Bang and nearly all of her support vessels, essentially throwing off the last vestiges of Imperial authority to be found in this Star Cluster.”
“Some scholars debate whether or not we can really trust the authenticity of the documents which came out of the Manticore System,” Masozi mused, her intelligent eyes snapping back and forth as her mind clearly worked to recall the details available to her.
“That’s as historical scholars are wont to do,” Jericho agreed as his brow lowered contemplatively, “but the Five Rights were, upon review by the Second Congress, unanimously supported and accepted—including their proposed order of primacy. Understandably, the vast majority of concerns regarding their authorship quickly waned—and, as evidenced by the Chimera Sector’s prosperity following the Great Collapse, it would seem that those concerns were unfounded.”
Masozi’s eyes ceased their side to side movements to fix themselves on Jericho’s as s
he squinted dubiously, “But you’re not convinced those concerns really were unfounded…is that it?”
“It wasn’t me who needed further convincing,” Jericho clarified, “it was Stephen Hadden.”
Masozi recoiled in surprise. “Stephen Hadden,” she repeated incredulously, “who invested so many of his organization’s resources into supporting the First Right—including his own life—wasn’t convinced of that Right’s authenticity? I find that hard to believe,” she scoffed, folding her arms defiantly across her broad, muscular chest.
“Stephen never questioned the Rights’ value,” Jericho explained, remembering several conversations he’d had with the old man prior to H.E. One’s destruction, “he only questioned how we had received them. He was, however, clearly more than willing to die defending those Rights since he could have easily fled H.E. One before the Virgin war fleet arrived. Instead, he remained behind to make a poetic last stand against President Blanco’s tyranny.”
“That still doesn’t make sense to me,” Masozi said, leaning forward with a hungry look in her eyes—the look of an investigator who is fast running out of clues and is desperate to find more. “Why not just evacuate H.E. One entirely? The crews aboard those warships didn’t need to die, and neither did the people at the moon base. They could have set the base’s reactors to overload after they’d escaped under the escort of those same ships that Blanco’s fleet destroyed.”
Jericho shrugged, knowing it was a question that he, too, would like to answer but also knowing it was unlikely it would ever be fully answered. “While I did enjoy a close friendship with Stephen—one which I suspect afforded me greater insight into his mind and motives than anyone other than Benton, his son,” Jericho added, silently mourning the death of Hadden’s son and the best damned operator he had ever worked with, “I’ve never been arrogant enough to think I had the man’s full measure. He was one of the few remaining people who had actually been alive during the Forge Wars which followed the Great Collapse, though he was still quite young at their conclusion. Anyone with that much time to contemplate our current situation, and the intellect to create and maintain the most powerful corporation this side of the wormhole, would be capable of insights far more profound than anything I’ve ever known.”
Sic Semper Tyrannis: The Chimera Adjustment, Book Two (Imperium Cicernus 5) Page 3