Sic Semper Tyrannis: The Chimera Adjustment, Book Two (Imperium Cicernus 5)

by Caleb Wachter

  Masozi considered the question before replying, “I think people need to have guiding principles in life…for someone like her—who was in a position of influence over, and in care for, children—the best mechanism would be if that person’s overriding principle, or value, is to do what’s best for the children rather than what’s best for her own personal agenda. If she doesn’t have that overriding value then there’s probably not a way to get out of the feedback loop without it just naturally going away of its own accord.”

  “Interesting,” Eve mused, shaking her head in amazement, “let’s see how it works!”

  Together, they input the changes to Eve’s personality matrix just as they had done prior to disembarking for Rationem. After the calculations had been performed, Eve’s avatar went slack-jawed—the number of errors immediately went down by 93%.

  “That’s…probably the best piece of advice I’ve ever been given,” Eve said after slowly working her mouth shut.

  Masozi felt more than a little self-conscious—and, if she was being honest, worried—at Eve’s effusive reaction. “Thanks…I think.”

  “That’s as much as we could hope to get out of this session, Sis,” Eve said with a bewildered shake of her head. “How ‘bout you reboot me and we’ll go over our last Adjustment’s dossier?”

  “Sounds good,” Masozi agreed, and they did precisely that.

  Three days later, the Zhuge Liang’s Phase Drive cut out at the edge of the system which would be their last stop on Masozi’s half of the Adjustments assigned by Mr. Newman.

  “All systems are green, Captain,” the Helmsman reported.

  “I am detecting regular Comm. chatter, Captain,” the Comm. Officer reported through her vocalizer. Her tentacles wove a complex dance across her custom-built workstation, and after a few seconds she—at least Masozi assumed it was female due to the feminine sounds of the vocalizer, though she had never specifically asked after the alien’s gender—reported, “I am detecting no Union Fleet signals.”

  “Good work, Shiva,” Captain Charles nodded curtly, “keep monitoring until we make station-keeping; I don’t want any surprises coming our way.”

  “Yes, Captain,” the octopus-looking crewmember, Shiva, acknowledged via her vocalizer.

  Captain Charles turned to Masozi, “Have you got everything you’ll need?”

  Masozi nodded, “Your technicians have done good work; I shouldn’t need more than a few hours for this one.”

  “Will you want a pilot?” Charles asked.

  Masozi shook her head confidently, “We’ve got it.”

  “You know,” the Zhuge Liang’s commanding officer said as he stood from his chair, “Jericho was right about you; you’re important in all of this. I only wish that bastard wasn’t right so often,” he added sourly.

  She was uncertain what had prompted Jericho cousin to make that particular statement, so she awkwardly said, “I’m just doing what I can.”

  “Well…then keep doing it, Adjuster,” the Captain said with a nod before moving across the bridge and overseeing the work of his Engineering liaison.

  Masozi quickly made her way to the shuttle bay, where Eve was working through the Tyson’s pre-flight routine.

  “And we’re here,” Eve declared triumphantly after the Tyson docked with the massive, cylindrical habitat station. “The Adjustee lives on the other side of the station, but it shouldn’t take us more than a half hour to get there even if we keep to an inconspicuous pace.”

  “Are you sure you can do this?” Masozi asked for the third time that day.

  “Of course, babe!” Eve replied cheerfully as the Infiltrator suit which Masozi had worn during the Keno Adjustment sat up of its own accord from the Tyson’s rear bench. “I mean I can’t run or do anything tactical since I’m only using the suit’s strength boosters for primary motivation, which was never something the designers anticipated,” she explained, using the suit’s vox to transmit her voice, “but I should be able to keep up with a slow walk. Heck, with enough practice and a little modification of the servos I should be able to approximate human combat movements.”

  “Ok,” Masozi allowed, “why don’t you test out the stealth systems again?”

  “Sure thing,” Eve replied, nodding the suit’s helmet a moment before the surface of the sleek armor shimmered and disappeared. Masozi could still see its outline as the light bent around it in a less-than-perfect fashion, but she doubted she would notice its presence unless she was specifically looking for it.

  “Looks good,” Masozi said after walking around the suit to inspect most of the possible viewing angles.

  “Of course I look good!” Eve quipped, placing the suit’s hands on its hips with deliberate movements—a posture Masozi could only make out after a few seconds of analyzing the new distortions of light caused by the suit’s near-perfect invisibility system.

  Chuckling at Eve’s unflappable attitude, Masozi slapped the button which sent the hatch sliding sideways to reveal the docking tube she had been assigned by the station’s traffic controllers.

  She had already transmitted her travel documents—which were naturally forged, courtesy of Eve—and payment for the Tyson to be docked for four hours prior to docking with the station, but Masozi was still taken off-guard by the lack of customs officials as she exited the shuttle. It seemed insane to her, a trained law enforcement officer, that a relatively unprotected habitat station like this one could survive without stringent security measures.

  The Infiltrator suit—which Masozi was now thinking of as Eve herself—moved behind Masozi and the door to the Tyson slid shut, presumably due to Eve having remotely activating the auto-lock mechanisms aboard the craft.

  “Testing,” Masozi said as she put the bud into her ear and activated the monocle, finding Eve’s image represented there immediately.

  “Good to go, Sis,” Eve said through the earpiece as her avatar struck one of her characteristic poses. Oddly, to Masozi’s mind, the Infiltrator suit remained silent. In fact she could not even hear its footfalls and it took her a few seconds before she silently scolded herself for having expected to hear it while it walked behind her—it was a stealth suit, after all.

  “Let’s run over this one more time,” Masozi said under her breath as she moved into the main corridor which connected several other docking tubes like the one she had just used.

  “Ok,” Eve said, and the documents supporting their newest Adjustment’s crimes sprang into being on the monocle’s screen, “the subject’s name is Jaime Carter; he’s a former Chief Administrator for this station and its surrounding infrastructure, which includes a dozen independent habitat modules holding about five hundred people each.”

  “Right,” Masozi nodded, having fallen into a rhythm with Eve on this, their fourth Tyrannis Adjustment together as they discussed the case prior to executing their duty, “and he was generally hailed as a solid, if unspectacular leader during his tenure six years ago.”

  “All that changed,” Eve continued as they made their way onto the promenade, which opened up into a reasonably clean, but by no means as well-maintained area as what she Masozi had seen on Far Point, “when a series of terrorist attacks were executed against four of the outlying hab modules.”

  “And nearly two thousand people died as a result of those attacks,” Masozi continued, having gone over the details so many times she felt like she knew them as well as she knew her own reflection, “after Mr. Carter failed to negotiate their safe release.”

  “The compounding factor,” Eve said as Masozi passed by what appeared to be a genuine pine tree in the middle of the promenade, stopping for a moment to appreciate the difficulty of such an agricultural feat in a space station, “is that the terrorists struck during the transitional period; Carter had lost his bid for re-election in a pretty lopsided campaign, and the inbound replacement held firm to a ‘no negotiation with terrorists’ line.”

  “Which brings us to the Mark,” Masozi nodded as they came
to a junction where Eve’s detailed map suggested they should turn left. “I’m still not entirely sure about the impetus for this Adjustment, Eve,” she admitted after setting off on her new course and passing by a pair of amorous teens who were giggling and fumbling their way down the corridor. “The rationale behind this one is that the voters suspect Mr. Carter of doing less than his best during the negotiations with the terrorists?”

  “That’s the gist of it,” Eve’s avatar nodded on Masozi’s monocle. “They’re accusing him of misusing his authority since he was ousted from office, and essentially screwing the public over on his way out the door.”

  “That seems…well, frankly, it seems unbelievable,” Masozi said after shaking her head.

  “It’s not unprecedented,” Eve allowed, calling up a series of documents onto the monocle’s retinal projector and presenting them to Masozi, “since the Forge Wars there have been seventeen public officials who were proven to have abused their power on their way out of office, and all but two of them were imprisoned after evidence of their crimes was brought to light.”

  “While the other two were Adjusted,” Masozi concluded an instant before the Marks of Adjustment for those two cases appeared inside her eye. “With over two dozen Star Systems in the Chimera Sector, and two centuries having passed since the Forge Wars, that we’ve only had seventeen proven cases of this means it’s incredibly rare…”

  “Nothing else in this guy’s profile suggests he’d abuse his power in that way,” Eve agreed, “but reasonable certainty has been satisfied, using documented evidence, that he could have done more to safeguard the hostages’ lives.”

  “I don’t know,” Masozi muttered as the corridor opened into another promenade—which was labeled The Green Zone—and she stopped to take in the awesome sight before her.

  From her current vantage point she could see the entire inner surface of the station, which had a trio of connected transit tubes running down the center of the cylindrical station’s structural support ‘spine.’ There were walls here and there, including directly before her, but when she looked up and around she could see that every visible surface was covered in green vegetation of some kind or another.

  “Wow…” she marveled, silently rebuking herself for being impressed by the presence of the pine tree earlier.

  “It’s not as efficient as mechanical systems would be at scrubbing the air and producing foodstuffs—not even close, really,” Eve said, “but there’s something to be said for bringing a piece of your past with you whenever you go somewhere new. The Spanish brought pigs with them wherever they went in their sailing ships; the Chinese carried soy plants with them on their ships because they’d mastered its life cycle so precisely they could harvest it for vitamin C; the Europeans brought European diseases to the natives in the Americas in order to gain the upper hand; and many early Martian colonists kept a banzai tree in their inflatable hab modules purely on principle. Yep,” Eve nodded, “humans are really good at rearranging their environments into familiar patterns, even if those patterns are horrific. That’s kinda the whole point of life, right; to reshape things in an image that either resembles, or is more desirable to, the most successful organisms?”

  Masozi’s moment of reverie was broken, and she cocked an eyebrow incredulously as she quipped, “So you’re a philosopher now, Eve?”

  Eve shrugged, “Philosophy’s just finding patterns and using those patterns to influence our conscious actions in a superior fashion. It’s not really any different than a set of guidelines for writing operational algorithms when you stop and think about it. Adherence to good guidelines result in fewer errors,” she gestured to her right with her digital hands, where a glowing ball of serene-looking yellow light was floating, before turning to her left side where an ominous looking, violet fog was hanging, “and following bad guidelines result in the Purple Screen of Death. Purple Screen of Death is bad, mmkay?”

  “Stay on task,” Masozi snickered as she finished absorbing the scenery. The station was a giant, hollow cylinder, and it seemed that nearly half of its length was taken up with this garden section.

  But the closer she looked the more run-down everything appeared. The plant life was healthy enough—at least, it appeared to be healthy to her untrained eye—but the metal struts all around her were corroding more badly than any other interior structure she had encountered since leaving Virgin for the first time.

  Her former life as an Investigator in New Lincoln seemed almost like a dream, or a memory she wished she could forget. Her thoughts quickly turned to Jericho, then to Afolabi, and she had to take several seconds to recompose herself after feeling her teeth grinding each other roughly enough to chip them if she wasn’t careful.

  “Back to Carter,” Masozi said as she pushed her way into the Green Zone, which contained several restaurants, garden areas, and small park areas where people were working on the plant life or just relaxing in the ambience. “None of this sits right with me. This seems…uncharacteristic of him.”

  “It does smell a little yeasty,” Eve admitted. “Everything in his career record suggests he’s a responsible steward of the public trust: he’s never even once been brought up on a corruption review; his public service medals could cover half this station’s interior surfaces; and both his LEO’s and his constituents gave him top marks for judicial application of his authority as a magistrate prior to being elected the top administrator for the station. In short: he’s the perfect bureaucrat…if that’s not, like, an oxymoron or something.”

  “Have you tapped into the local wireless feeds?” Masozi asked as they wound their way through the garden-like Green Zone. Mr. Carter’s living quarters were located on the far side of the station, along with the vast majority of the residents since the area where the Tyson was docked served primarily as a commerce and industry sector.

  “Yep,” Eve nodded promptly, “but I’m having a trick of a time zeroing in on Carter…wait a sec, I think I’ve got him. I’ll be…” she shook her head in apparent bewilderment, “well this should make things easy: he’s here in Green Zone.”

  “Really?” Masozi asked, stopping in her tracks and looking around for a moment before realizing how foolish of a thing that was to do. “Where?” she asked after setting her jaw in self-annoyance.

  “To the right about sixty meters is a café,” Eve explained, and an unimaginative business logo appeared on the monocle, “seems he’s taking a spot of tea along with the fresh-ish air.”

  Masozi’s hand went to her hip where a single-use, all-carbon pistol was secreted. If push came to shove she was confident she could subdue Mr. Carter with her bare hands—she outweighed him by ten kilos and he had absolutely no combat training. She still marveled that the station where he lived opted for such light security measures—especially after the terrorist attacks which the populace had suffered just a few short years ago during Carter’s tenure as Head Administrator.

  “I want you to dig up whatever you can,” Masozi instructed, taken more than a little by surprise at the proximity of the Adjustee and time to his pending Adjustment. She’d expected to have nearly another half hour to think things through, but with the opportunity having presented itself she knew it would be a mistake to ignore it.

  “What should I look for?” Eve asked smartly.

  “Anything—anything,” Masozi repeated emphatically, lowering her voice as she caught herself just short of a shout. “I don’t want to kill an innocent man, Eve.”

  “Me either, babe,” Eve agreed, “I’ll go dig up what I can. But, really, a face-to-face wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

  “I agree,” Masozi nodded, “I’m going to deactivate the retinal projector.”

  “Sure thing; I’ll ring you if I find anything in the station’s databases,” Eve said before her image disappeared from Masozi’s vision. “I’ll move the suit just outside the half-gate nearest Carter.”

  A few moments later, Masozi came upon the very café where their quarry was sup
posed to be located. Sure enough, there sat Mr. Carter. He was a well-composed man in his early seventies with a clean and trim appearance. He wore a light grey, three piece suit which clashed with the earthen tones around him at the cafe.

  He seemed to be reading a data slate while sipping an entirely-too-small teacup, and Masozi drew a short breath as she knew she was taking a risk by presenting herself to him. But she also knew that he deserved a chance to explain himself—just as she had offered the other three Tyrannis Adjustees she had dealt with since accepting Newman’s assigned tasks.

  So she moved toward him and, after arriving at his table, she asked, “Is this seat taken?”

  He looked up in surprise and a warm, seemingly genuine smile spread across his lips. He then looked pointedly around the nearly empty café before his smile grew slightly and he gestured to the chair opposite his own, “By all means, my dear.”

  Masozi slid into the chair—which, due to its positioning, allowed her to conceal her left hand as it rested over the still-concealed pistol—and a server came over to ask, “Can I take your order?”

  Uncertain of what the menu even contained, Masozi gestured to Carter’s teacup, “I’ll have whatever he’s having.”

  Carter’s eyes seemed to twinkle as he nodded in approval, his oddly intriguing, drawling accent flavoring his speech as he said, “Hex-strength Fliravean Musk Tea—hold the gattis milk.”

  The server nodded and went to the small counter where an assortment of pre-mix machines was positioned.

  “What might bring you to our little corner of the Sector?” Mr. Carter asked as the server worked quietly at the counter a few meters away. “You’re clearly not from ‘round here.”

  “How would you know that?” Masozi asked, sounding more nervous than she’d anticipated being.

  His smile, which lit his eyes with a degree of warmth she had rarely seen in a human’s countenance—even in art—flickered momentarily and he lowered his gaze to his teacup. “I have a perfect memory, my dear…and though it has served me well in my life it is, in many respects, a lifelong curse,” he explained in his drawling, but far from annoying accent before sighing. “There are presently three hundred twenty two thousand, four hundred ninety seven souls living in the jurisdiction of this station. Of those, we have three thousand and sixty two who hailed, at one point or another in their respective journeys, from Virgin Prime—which, judgin’ by your accent, is the place of your birth—and of those, only three hundred and six share your exquisite complexion.” He gestured to her shoulders with an approving nod, “Among those three hundred and six are four citizens who can match your obvious athletic prowess and physical stature…but all of them are men. That,” he gestured to his data slate, “and the morning’s most recent dockin’ logs, which are public information here, led me to conclude that you are a visitor in our fair Star System.”