“And I intend to do just that,” Boss Hogan said firmly. He refused to be called ‘captain’ because he both despised and respected the military, and wanted nothing to do with their naming conventions. “We’re coming in high, so the likelihood of a patrolling ship being in range to intercept us before we make Virgin Prime are pretty slim—not that they won’t try, of course.”
“Again,” Jericho said after giving a brief look to Shu, who appeared ready to disembark, “you have our thanks.”
“Your credits already cleared,” Hogan replied with a dismissive wave of his hand, “they’re all the thanks I need.”
“Phase Threshold in three…two…one…disengaging Phase Drive,” the helmswoman reported, and the ship snapped back into real space with more whiplash than Jericho ever remembered experiencing aboard the sleek, incredibly fast vessel. “Scanning the area,” the woman said as the smallish screen at the front of the bridge began to populate with signatures, “That’s odd…I’m reading only three warships in the system, Boss.”
“Confirm that,” Hogan barked at another member of his crew, who appeared to be working some sort of information relay station.
A few tense moments passed before the skinny man at the station nodded, “Confirmed, Boss; we’ve got only two Corvettes and a Destroyer in-system. The Destroyer’s in stable orbit over Virgin Prime and the Corvettes are maintaining the blockade at Philippa.”
Tim Hogan turned to Jericho, who knew precisely what the diminished fleet strength at the Capitol meant. “Care for a wager as to where they’ve gone?” the ship’s Boss asked in a light tone, but his eyes showed he knew it was far from a laughing matter.
Jericho felt his stomach turn as he shook his head, “Just get me into orbit as fast as you can.”
Hogan nodded, “You heard the client: Operation Kick-To-The-Curb is still green. Punch it, Kelli.” The woman at the helm—who happened to the Boss Hogan’s spouse—nodded and the ship accelerated well beyond the rate at which even the Zhuge Liang could manage.
As they bore down on the planet where his work would soon commence, Jericho could only hope that the Virgin SDF’s first stop wouldn’t be where he had every reason to believe it would be.
Chapter VIII: An Attitude Adjustment
“Well, there they go,” Eve said with relief evident in her voice as Mrs. Kearcher’s family finished saying their goodbyes and filed into the taxi which would take them to the nearby airport in time for their flight home.
Masozi watched as the woman—who was blonde, medium height, and slender of stature—who she was to adjust waved goodbye to her son and grandchildren until the taxi turned the corner and disappeared from sight.
Looking both ways across the street, Masozi saw no traffic to speak of and only a pair of pedestrians, so she strode across the pavement and felt her fingertips begin to tingle anxiously—a sensation that quickly spread throughout the rest of her body as she placed an earbud into her left ear, through which Eve could communicate with her covertly if necessary.
Making eye contact with the pale-skinned, oddly unhealthy-looking woman, Masozi felt the anxiety almost vanish completely as the Adjustee bestowed a warm smile on her.
“Good morning,” Mrs. Kearcher said politely as Masozi approached.
“Good morning,” Masozi replied awkwardly, feeling some of her anxiety return. “Is your family name ‘Kearcher’?”
“It is,” the woman replied, “do I know you?”
“I was one of your students,” Masozi lied, beginning to spin a web of deceit which she and Eve had constructed in recent hours, “well, not really your student’ you were administrator when I enrolled in University. I just wanted to thank you for everything you did for me—even though you probably never even knew my name.”
“Oh, nonsense,” Mrs. Kearcher said shortly, “I remember every name on every document I’ve ever signed. What’s yours?”
“Emily Newgard,” Masozi lied, having selected the name of a woman who would roughly match her physical description, “class of—“
“Class of 198, who graduated with top marks for her district and was valedictorian in her high school,” the woman interrupted easily. “You pursued a career in law, if I recall correctly?”
“I did,” Masozi answered, glad for the tiny sliver of truth she could claim in that particular reply, “I’m impressed that you remembered my name.”
“I pay extra attention to the special ones,” Mrs. Kearcher said smoothly before gesturing to the door leading into her house, “would you care to come in for some tea?”
“I…” Masozi hesitated before shaking her head, “I really shouldn’t.”
“Nonsense!” the woman declared. “You have traveled here to pay me a kindness; the least I can do is return the favor.”
Masozi felt her guts churn at the woman’s last statement, but forcibly nodded her head and said, “I’d like that, thank you.”
“Come on in,” the woman said after opening the door and Masozi was led into a small, but neatly-appointed living room which was in a state of disarray which she suspected was unnatural for it. “My grandchildren were visiting,” she explained as she swept through the room with careful precision as she collected the majority of loose articles from the floor and tabletops, “do you take sugar?”
“No, thank you,” Masozi said as she looked around to find a picture of the woman in whose home she had just been invited. She quickly found one—a three-dimensional pair of photo-realistic busts featuring Mrs. Kearcher with her late husband, a plump little man named Eric. “Is this your husband?” she asked, leaning toward the bust as though it interested her.
“Ricky?” the woman asked as she brought in a tea set. “Yes, that’s him,” she replied as she poured the tea into the delicate cups.
“Where is he now?” Masozi asked, having fashioned an entire string of questions along this very topic. She would not kill this woman without knowing—really knowing—that she had done what she’d done purposefully.
“He’s been gone for twenty two years,” Mrs. Kearcher explained as she handed Masozi a steaming teacup. “He was such a kind man.”
“You never remarried?” Masozi asked after taking a sip of the tea—which tasted incredibly strong.
“No,” the woman said as she sat on a wooden-armed chair beside the image of her late husband, “we’d already had our children, and I was content to watch my grandchildren grow while focusing on my career.”
Masozi allowed the silence to linger for a respectful moment before asking, “How did he die?”
The woman’s eyes hardened instantly, though her visage remained composed, and she said with a hint of sorrow, “He died in the Baltus riots while serving a medical mission there.”
Masozi nodded slowly, having thoroughly familiarized herself with the Baltus riots during the night of research. Some militant worshipers of a splinter religion calling itself the Hand of the Cosmos had coordinated a series of terrorist attacks in the poorer districts of Baltus, which was one of the cities near Hunter’s Prairie which served as a major seaport for Rationem. Those attacks—which included several deadly suicide bombings—had claimed the lives of only a few dozen people, but they had sparked a chain of riots which had seen fully a tenth of the city awash in flames before it was finally quelled.
The religion’s manifesto, delivered by a man who had cut out his own tongue prior to delivering it, had claimed that the riots had been the ultimate goal of the attacks. They had declared that humanity was a danger not only to the universe, but to itself, and that the riots should be sufficient proof to cause Rationem’s populace to abandon their ways—ways which were never clearly elucidated—and leave the stars alone.
“I’m…I’m sorry to hear that,” Masozi said, forcing a defiant note into her voice as she added, “why do people have to be so stupid?”
“What do you mean, dear?” Mrs. Kearcher asked after a lone missed beat in the tempo of the conversation.
“The bombings we
re executed by madmen—anarchists, even—who preyed on the most basic nature of humanity,” Masozi explained, feeling no small degree of shame as she said the duplicitous words. “People are born wanting to believe in something greater than themselves, and that belief became a weapon that those cultists used against them.”
“Indeed,” the woman agreed before setting down her tea. “But what can any of us do? As you say, it seems to be an unavoidable facet of human nature,” she added, a quiet fire entering her affect as she finished, “it is also one which cost my dear Ricky the chance to know his grandchildren.”
Masozi hesitated. She had two ways she could go with the conversation and, judging by Mrs. Kearcher’s last words, she gave herself no better than a fifty-fifty chance of picking the right one.
“Go through the front door,” Eve urged through her earpiece, “her heart rate’s up, her pupils are hyper-reactive, and her voice stress patterns indicate she wants to say it, Sis.”
That was enough for Masozi, who nodded and said, “People like that shouldn’t be given positions of power. I heard that one of the cult’s leaders had previously been a professor at the same university I attended; there should be some kind of mechanism in place to exclude people who insist on sun-worshiping—or any other form of mysticism—from having such influential positions. Young minds are too easily influenced as it is.”
“You surprise me, my dear,” the woman said with narrowed eyes, and for a moment Masozi thought she may have been discovered. Her hand crept to her left buttock, where she had concealed a tiny, holdout slug-thrower. “In fact,” Kearcher continued, a dark smile coming over her face, “I had just such a thought over two decades ago.”
“You’re right, though…what can we do?” Masozi pressed as she rubbed the thigh of her prosthetic leg in an attempt to cover her sudden movement toward the holdout pistol. “Rationem’s system of law clearly states that prior involvements with any social groups, or even ideologies, can have no bearing on an individual’s fitness for public office. There’s no way to legally keep people like that off our campuses!” She lowered her head as she delivered the last piece of the lie she and Eve had constructed for the occasion, “My best friend from college was a victim of a similar crime during the Wayland Blackouts.” She found her hands were trembling, though not with anger at some false memory; they were trembling because she knew this woman was about to confirm that she was, indeed, in need of Adjustment.
That very fact flew in the face of so many ideas which she had held dear growing up—chief among them being the human ability to overcome personal experience by using logic and reason. This woman was supposed to be a dispassionate educator; if she couldn’t be governed by reason then who could be?!
“I spent my entire public career ensuring that people with minds like yours would be able to make a difference in that regard,” Kearcher said slowly, and when Masozi looked up she saw a fierce determination in the woman’s eyes—a determination which was more like zealotry than she had expected she would find. “When laws are no longer sufficient, one must find other methods of redress.”
“What do you mean?” Masozi asked, fighting to keep her teeth from clamping together in anger at the pending confession. She had sweated enough suspects to know the look of a person who was about to reveal everything. In those situations, it was always best to let the suspect lead the conversation with as little prompting as possible.
“Laws are for the people,” Kearcher explained, “and when the laws no longer serve the people, those laws should be ignored for the greater good. How is one’s affiliation with a mystical cult like Hand of the Cosmos not relevant to their ability to serve their fellow citizens—especially when such cults commit barbaric acts like those at Baltus?”
“How could we do that, though?” Masozi asked. “Isn’t there oversight to ensure that kind of thing can’t happen?”
“Like anything else,” Kearcher said patiently, “it requires discipline, an ability to recognize where one’s impact can be greatest, and the conviction to accept the consequences should they come.” She gave a knowing look and turned to place her teacup and saucer on a nearby end-table.
Masozi had heard enough to satisfy her morbid curiosity, so while the woman’s back was turned she reached into her jacket’s left pocket to produce the Tyrannis Mark. When Mrs. Kearcher once again faced her, Masozi was placing the Mark on the coffee table before her. The educator’s eyes snapped down to fix on the Mark, and Masozi could see a wave of fear wash over the older woman.
“So…” the blond woman said, the barest tremor in her voice as she spoke, “you’ve finally come.”
“Why?” Masozi demanded, feeling genuinely betrayed by the older woman’s near-confession—a confession which was far from necessary, since the evidence Eve had collected independently of Mr. Newman’s data packet was more than enough to validate the Adjustment. “Why would you abuse your power like that?”
“Abuse?” Kearcher’s eyes flared, and the brief fear she had displayed seemed to disappear in the blink of an eye as she leaned forward and held Masozi’s gaze with her dull, grey eyes. “What good is power if it cannot be used for the greater good?”
“You were given that power by the very people who you betrayed,” Masozi fired back.
“On balance, no lives were lost,” Kearcher said icily, “and no positions of import went unfilled. The zealot and the fanatic must not be allowed to enter positions of authority over others; they have proven all too willing to abuse their power—“
“I agree,” Masozi interrupted angrily, pointing at the Mark on the table, “which is why I accepted this assignment. You even admit that your actions resulted in the deaths of some of the children who depended on you to place them where they deserved—how can you live with yourself?!”
Mrs. Kearcher leaned back in her chair and laced her fingers before her lips as she regarded Masozi for a few moments of silence. “I live for my grandchildren, little girl,” she said flatly, “and I live to prevent situations like the one which claimed my husband’s life. If ‘believers’ like yourself deem me fit for Adjustment then I gladly accept my fate; I have no doubt that history will show that I acted in humanity’s best interests.”
Masozi stood from her chair and produced the holdout pistol, which she gripped tightly in the palm of her hand as the elderly woman sat up in her chair reflexively at the sight of the weapon.
“The only things I believe in,” Masozi said as she raised the weapon and cocked the hammer, “are the value of reason…and the upholding of our laws.”
“Tell yourself that if you must, dear,” Kearcher said venomously, “but deep down, you’re no different than the people who killed my Ricky. If you can’t see that then you are truly blind to reason.”
Masozi hesitated. She had the nagging suspicion that to kill this woman was somehow wrong…
“Do it, Soze,” Eve said through the earpiece. “This is the whole reason the Timent Electorum was created: to make public examples of punishing the people who misuse their power.”
“I know,” Masozi said tersely, and the old woman snorted derisively.
“Then you are nothing but a stupid, hired gun,” Kearcher sneered. “Go ahead and kill me, if y—“
Masozi squeezed the trigger, and the silenced weapon’s recoil bucked her arm up nearly a foot into the air. When she lowered the weapon from her line of sight, she saw that she had hit her target center-mass directly over her heart.
Kearcher looked up at her with fear-filled eyes for a brief moment, but that fear quickly turned to hatred. After a few seconds, that hatred vanished and her body went limp in the chair.
She moved beside the woman and checked her for a pulse. When she found none for several seconds, Masozi stood and flipped her jacket’s collar up to conceal her face. As she went to leave, she stopped to collect the Mark but Eve said, “Leave it, Soze. Tyrannis Adjustments almost always have a Mark present at the scene.”
Masozi felt stupid fo
r having forgotten that particular bit of data which she had gleaned from Jericho’s briefing regarding Tyrannis Adjustments. “Thanks, Eve,” she muttered numbly, and exited the woman’s house.
“I’ve got a cab waiting around the corner,” Eve said with an unexpectedly solemn note, and Masozi looked to see the prearranged transport unit parked a few hundred feet from her position.
Putting her feet to the pavement, she made her way to the taxi and entered, feeling far less anxiety than she had expected to feel in the aftermath of the Adjustment.
The driver wordlessly began the trek toward the warehouse where she had stashed the hover-bike. While Masozi was now certain that Mrs. Kearcher had indeed required Adjustment for her unthinkable actions, she couldn’t stop a silent, short-lived stream of tears from running down her cheeks on the way to the abandoned warehouse.
But even she couldn’t tell who those tears were for.
Chapter IX: A Not-So-Nice Trip
“Ms. St. Murray,” Jericho greeted after his chartered shuttle had undocked from the Mustang in low orbit of Virgin Prime, “I’m glad for the opportunity to benefit from your expertise.”
“And I am glad to provide it,” she replied with a gracious inclination of her head. The fact that Jericho had killed her brother was not lost on him—or her, obviously—but they were both professionals who were united in a common cause.
But even if they weren’t united by their mutual desire to end President Blanco’s reign, Jericho knew he could use Ms. St. Murray—and he made a point never to mistrust someone who would be of use to him.
“Bring me up to speed, if you will,” Jericho said as the shuttle careened toward the planet’s surface. Behind them, hails from local military vessels went unanswered as a patrol craft made a last-ditch effort to pursue them. But the shuttle was too fast, and too adept within the atmosphere, to be effectively blockaded by the spacecraft in their wake.
Of course, getting safely to the surface would provide the first of what were certain to be many challenges during this particular set of Adjustments.
Sic Semper Tyrannis: The Chimera Adjustment, Book Two (Imperium Cicernus 5) Page 12