Sic Semper Tyrannis: The Chimera Adjustment, Book Two (Imperium Cicernus 5)
Page 51
Newman’s link had not even landed on the kitchen floor before the device exploded and the entire room went dark—along with the rest of the station, as far as he could see.
“A local EMP,” Jericho growled, having correctly guessed the form which the wrist-link’s booby trap would take. Then he heard a series of muffled blows could be heard from Lady Jessica’s position beside Newman. Russo’s blade fell away from Jericho’s neck, and several seconds passed as the sounds of a wordless struggle persisted from near the bistro’s door.
The lights returned in a flicker and, faster than Jericho could blink his eye, a high-powered cannon popped out from concealment in the wall beside him. With a mechanically-precise shot, the first shot tore Newman’s left arm from his body just before he could bring Russo’s blade down into Jessica’s eye.
Another shot went through his other arm, just below the shoulder, before the first arm had fully detached from his body—and two more shots removed each of his legs just above the knee.
Newman fell to the ground in a pile of dismembered body parts, and only after he had done so did Jericho see that Russo was lying in an enlarging pool of blood and clutching his own throat, which had been sliced cleanly open with a single wound.
Lady Jessica immediately tore her gown into narrow tourniquets, and used them to stem the flow of blood from Newman’s bleeding stumps.
“Good shooting, Eve,” Jericho said, equally impressed and disquieted by his backup’s unerring accuracy.
“He looks clean, Jericho,” Eve said from the wrist-link’s miniature speaker. “I’ve already alerted station medical to come provide help; who should they prioritize?”
Jericho looked to Lady Jessica, who had just completed applying the tourniquets to what remained of the now-unconscious—and dangerously pale—Newman. “That’s your call, Lady Jessica,” Jericho said with a light shrug after regaining his sense of balance and standing on his feet for several seconds. “I’m satisfied we’ve gotten what we need out of him, but if your government needs further proof then we can probably extract something useful directly from his brain.”
“Newman’s brain will suffer only minimal degradation during the return to your ship, provided we receive four units of blood to transfuse during transit,” Jessica said as she moved to Russo’s side, applied pressure to his wound and nodded. “Adjuster Barragan requires immediate assistance; the stun field compromised my fine motor function to the point that I would not wish to attempt a field repair of his wound. As he is a citizen of Far Point, they will provide him with medical assistance. We should return to your ship to conduct Mr. Newman’s interrogation.”
Jericho noted several deep gashes in her skin—a few of which would have been lethal to a normal human—and a few on her neck which appeared to have caused actual damage to her cybernetic implants there. “Again, it’s your call—but that’s exactly how I would do it.”
The door swung open and a medical response team entered the room, followed by a quad of station security in heavy armor, packing sonic rifles.
“I am Lady Jessica,” Jessica said, turning and exposing her half-naked, heavily-damaged body and composing herself with an air of dignity that Jericho doubted he would ever possess—even if he hadn’t been half-naked and torn up from a deadly knife fight. “As a duly-appointed representative of New Britain, I am taking Mr. Newman into custody. Inform Administrator Emilianenko that I intend to extradite him as quickly as possible, and that this extradition will result in the fugitives President Blanco’s double referred to leaving the station—also inform her that this extradition is in accordance with Timent Electorum protocols which she will find provide for such.”
The leader of the quad did a double-check—his eyes snagging on Jessica’s perfectly-sculpted left breast for a moment before he turned and spoke in a lowered voice while the medical team cautiously began to work on Russo.
Two minutes later, the quad commander nodded, “Mr. Newman’s stay here is on a temporary basis and Far Point only refuses extradition of permanent residents. Proceed to your docking tube, ma’am. We’re now under orders to emigrate all non-residents of this territory immediately.”
Jericho gathered up his own wrist-link—which had been selectively hardened in the event of an EMP like the one Newman had employed as a trap on his own wrist-link—and said, “Did you get everything from his link, Eve?”
“Oh yeah,” Eve said with supreme, infectious confidence, “we’ve got this jackass by the balls, Jericho.”
“Is there anything in there about Blanco?” Jericho asked hopefully as two of the security quad gathered up what was left of Newman—including what remained of his detached limbs—and escorted the three of them toward the docking tube. Watching Lady Jessica casually walk through the station was an impressive sight—as was the unnaturally perfect feminine geometry displayed beneath what little remained of her tattered dress.
“Nothing directly linking them,” Eve said with open disappointment, “but there’s a googol of information about Union fleet movements and active operations. It’s all encrypted, but that encryption uses the same architecture as Stiglitz’ stuff. Give me a few days of uninterrupted runtimes and I’ll break it all down into useable info—which we can then use to conduct a more thorough interrogation than we managed with Stiglitz.”
“Great work, Eve,” Jericho said, breathing a sigh of relief as they entered the lift.
“No prob, boss,” Eve said happily, “how’d you like my shooting back there?”
“I’m already on the record saying I never want to be your enemy,” Jericho replied as the lift door shut behind them. “If I’d had any recent doubts about that position, you just erased them.”
“Smart man,” Eve snickered.
“Who is this ‘Eve’ person?” Jessica asked coolly.
“That’s a long story,” Jericho said with a lopsided grin.
“It appears we will have ample time,” Jessica said pointedly. “As a duly-appointed representative of my government, my assistance with your flight from Far Point will be interpreted by Union leadership as an act of war on behalf of my System. As soon as we set foot on your warship, our causes will become inextricably linked.”
“When you say ‘Union leadership,’ can I take that to mean that you don’t believe that the man in the transmission was actually President Blanco?” Jericho pressed as they made their way to the end of the passage where the Tyson was docked.
“That would be accurate,” she confirmed.
“What changed your mind?” he asked as the door to the shuttle opened.
“Nothing,” she shrugged, “I consider the likelihood to be identical to that which I calculated prior to your surreptitious stun field disabling us.”
“Wait,” Jericho stopped as the guards deposited Newman’s limbless body on the craft’s floor before exiting, “you’re saying nothing has changed in your opinion?”
“Nothing has changed,” she concurred.
“Then why are you coming with me?” he asked warily, knowing that there was no longer anything he could do to stop her if she decided to end him right then, and right there.
“Because by demonstrating Newman’s duplicity, you reduced the likelihood of your collusion with President Blanco and Union leadership from 82% to 55%,” she explained as she examined his still-bleeding neck before reaching into the shuttle’s first aid kit and applying an adhesive coagulant patch. “Combined with other factors present in the formula, reasonable certainty was no longer satisfied.”
“So you still think I’m in league with Blanco’s people?” he asked incredulously, more amused than offended.
“I do,” she nodded after finishing with the med-patch, “but given the severity of the situation, and the unlikely probability that my world would be spared from the Union’s retribution—since my involvement with Blanco’s Adjustment on PSH Prime was well-documented—this course of action proved the correct one.”
“Just for curiosity’s sake,” Jericho muttered a
s he fired up the shuttle’s engines, “what was your final probability that supporting me back there was the right move?”
“50.32%,” she replied casually as she strapped into the co-pilot’s seat.
He stopped and arched an eyebrow in her direction, “A third of a percent better than a coin flip?”
“In the interests of clarity, that number was the product of an internal computational error,” she said measuredly after he had resumed the pre-flight routine. “The real result was 49.55%.”
“Saved by bad math…” Jericho shook his head as he disengaged the docking collar.
“We all make mistakes,” she said as the Neil deGrasse Tyson lurched away from Far Point Station, likely for the last time since Jericho doubted they would be welcome there again. “Fortunately, the error permitted the gathering of additional information which pushed the probability to 59.30% after a recalculation.”
“It’s not pretty…but I’ll take it,” Jericho said grimly, knowing that a victory, no matter how close or ugly, was still a victory—and at least this time it hadn’t cost him an arm.
The End
Afterword:
Book Two of this trilogy is now complete, and it weighs in at 156k words (counting this afterword)! I appreciate you having taken the ride with me thus far, and I hope you’re as excited for the next book as I am J. I have yet to start in on it since I have a whole slew of Spineward Sectors books I need to write in my brother’s universe, but I’ve got the story for the conclusion already in my head—and have done since penning book one.
I’d like to take a moment and thank Chris Nuttall for opening this shared universe to people like me, and I hope we can grow this thing into something that takes on a life of its own. It’s an outstanding opportunity to collaborate with him and I appreciate being one of the first crewmembers on this particular ship. On that note, if you’re an aspiring author and would like to inquire about writing in this universe just drop on by the Imperium Cicernus Facebook Group page and leave a post so we can strike up a conversation!
We’re flying by the seat of our pants a bit regarding submissions, but the biggest thing is that the book needs to be a full-sized novel (100k words or more). If you have something shorter in mind, feel free to run it by us but understand that it is extremely hard to market short stories and novellas these days with all of the competition on the e-marketplace. We’ve talked about doing short story or novella collections, and we’re open to the idea but the series probably needs to be more established before we start trying to release smaller works. Readers are presented with so many options in this age of indie e-publishing, which means authors need to do their utmost to stand out from the crowd. An important part of that is providing a big enough experience that they can really sink their teeth into it; oddly enough, books the size of this one are fast becoming the norm in the indie scene!
I’ve had a few ideas on how to approach the third book in this series and would love to hear your feedback on them at the Facebook Group linked a couple paragraphs above this one. Firstly, I want to do a novella which covers Shu’s side adventure where she attempts to discover where the smuggled minerals are going. I’m shooting for something the size of the one presently available—for free!—at that same Facebook Group, called Guarding an Angel, which details how Jericho got Eve’s fiddly bits off of the falling espionage platform. So I’d advise you to join the group in order to gain free access to it as soon as it’s updates.
The second story I’d like to tell before we get back to Jericho, Masozi, and Eve is one which tells a little bit of Stephen Hadden’s history and shows just how involved his family was in the drama unfolding in the Chimera Sector. The main question I have for you, the reader, is whether you would like this story to be folded into Book Three or if that would be unwanted? As I said, I would love to hear your thoughts on the Facebook page.
Well that should do it for this installment. I’d like to thank you again for reading this book, and if you enjoyed it I’d really appreciate you taking the time to leave a review on Amazon. Reviews are so unbelievably important to indie authors, and one of the nicest things you can do after buying a book is giving an honest opinion. Sometimes the criticisms hurt (well…they usually hurt) but I guarantee you that the vast majority of indie authors check their books for new reviews so regularly that it often feels like an addiction. A positive review can sometimes be the difference between a good day and a bad day for us; I shamelessly ask you to bear that in mind as I return to working on my next project!
Caleb Wachter