Ure Infectus (Imperium Cicernus Book 4)

by Caleb Wachter

  Benton shot him an angry look before a grin spread across his borderline grotesque features. “Ain’t nuthin’ but a thang, bro,” he said with infectious positivity, and for once Jericho let his top operator’s penchant for odd speech pass. It would have been more than a little difficult to secure passage for Masozi out of New Lincoln without Benton’s help—and even if it had been possible, it would have been incredibly expensive.

  But, again, money wasn’t something Benton lost sleep over.

  If, for some unforeseen reason, his current revenue stream was to dry up there was little doubt in Jericho’s mind that his top operator would go on with literally no interruption. There were probably only a few dozen people in the Sector who could match Benton’s skill with acquiring, storing, manipulating, and then transmitting data without being detected in the process. He was truly the apex predator of the information world, and Jericho was acutely aware of just how fortunate he had been to not only call on him as an ally, but to consider him a genuine friend.

  “How’s Eve doing?” Jericho asked somewhat awkwardly. He had not seen the re-programmed hover drone in quite a few days and had actually begun to wonder if something had gone amiss with ‘her.’

  Benton rolled his eyes emphatically. “Women be women,” he said, as though he was confessing some great secret. “I understand they need lovin’ attention and all but lemme tell you something, dawg: Eve takes the term ‘high maintenance’ to an all-new level.

  Forget about the ‘stratosphere;’ we talkin’ straight-up ‘thermosphere,’ feel me?”

  Jericho was quite certain that he could not ‘feel him,’

  whatever that actually meant, so he sighed. He was fairly certain that Benton’s increasingly prominent delusions about Eve would one day be his undoing, but in truth he couldn’t fault the other man for crawling inside a fantasy and letting it become part of everything he did. Jericho knew all too well the temptation to do that very thing…

  Apparently Benton took his sigh for one of sympathy because he, too, sighed. “Yeah, you be wise to it,” he said with a knowing look before squirming slightly in his bed. “Can you hand me that jar?” he asked, indicating a small, glassy-looking container with a bluish liquid inside. “Eve usually helps me with this sorta thing, but she be down for a little nap at the moment,” he explained as Jericho handed him the jar. “Thanks, dawg,” he said as he opened the jar and Jericho could not help but feel a measure of revulsion as Benton plucked a small, greyish, amorphous blob from the blue liquid and placed it on his chest.

  As soon as the blob hit his skin, it flattened into a small disc. A few moments after that it lengthened and narrowed before slowly moving its way down his chest toward his many abdominal rolls. Benton plucked two more of the leech-like creatures from the jar before closing it and handing the container back to Jericho, who wordlessly placed the jar where it had been.

  “I would have been dead ten years ago if not for these little suckers,” Benton said seriously, dropping his absurd speech pattern momentarily. “Even with the bio-bed, my family curse is rippin’ my neurons apart…it’s really only a matter of time before simple biology catches up to me and I stop bein’ entirely.”

  Jericho nodded in understanding as the three leech-looking creatures disappeared into Benton’s skin folds. “How long do you think you have?” he asked.

  “With a constant supply of these little guys,” Benton replied nonchalantly, “three, maybe four years. Without ‘em…maybe a month,” he shrugged.

  “Why not go through gene therapy?” Jericho asked, having never ventured to question Benton’s failure to do so. “Don’t tell me you couldn’t afford it.”

  Benton snickered. “Nah, ain’t nuthin’ like that; at some point we all gotta respect who, and what, we are and be at peace with it. I’m a God-damned genius the likes of which this Sector has never seen—and I be usin’ that gift for the betterment of my peoples every waking moment of my life,” he said, his voice taking on an almost religious tone. “Every star what don’t get sucked into a black hole eventually burns out, and the brightest ones go quickest of all…but everyone gets touched by their passin’ and they leave behind the greatest legacy of all: order from chaos, and complex structure from simplicity. That’s some cosmically poetic shit right there, feel me?”

  While Jericho would have liked to dismiss Benton’s ramblings as those of a delusional man trying to come to grips with his own mortality, he suspected the truth was that Benton had life better figured than he did himself. “I think I take your meaning,” Jericho said after a moment’s consideration.

  “Good,” Benton said almost defensively before asking, “what you want me to reply to ‘Mr. O’?”

  Jericho shook his head. “Nothing,” he replied simply, “I know where to go.”

  “What about sleeping beauty over there?” Benton jerked his head toward the still-sleeping Masozi. “You don’t actually trust her, do you?”

  Jericho snorted softly before giving Benton a meaningful look, “I trusted you didn’t I?” The big man made as if to protest, but Jericho shook his head and continued, “What I said to each of you was true: human psychology isn’t that complicated to me. She may not have accepted the reality of the situation just yet, but she won’t do anything I haven’t already planned for…and I may need you to trust me on that particular point later on,” he added with a hint of iron in his voice.

  Benton held his gaze for several seconds before relenting and giving a shrug. “I trust you, Jericho,” he said eventually. “But if you be goin’ where I think you be goin’…”

  Jericho nodded in total understanding. “I’ll need you here anyway,” he assured Benton. The truth was he would have preferred to have his top operator with him where he was going but Benton’s talents would likely go underutilized in his next mission, which figured to be considerably more blunt-force-trauma than surgical incision. “Track the feeds for me and send regular packets via courier; if I need your help I won’t hesitate to call for support.”

  “I can do you one better than off-site support,” Benton said with a knowing grin. Jericho quirked an eyebrow, but the bedridden man shook his head, “I’ll explain once everything’s ready…but it just be a loan and you gotta promise to take care of things should something happen to me, feel me?”

  “No, I don’t ‘feel you’,” Jericho said with thinly-veiled exasperation at Benton’s insistence on using patterns of speech which had been dead—apparently with good reason—for several millennia. He sighed before adding, “But I do trust you.”

  Chapter XIII: An Assignment

  The Esmerelda Empática was scheduled to pull into port just ten hours after Masozi had completed her perusal of the ‘Goat’ file on the data pad which Jericho had given her…and what she had discovered cast serious shadows on her long-held confidence in the Sector’s system of government.

  When she had completed reading the information and subsequently compiling notes, she knew it was time to confront Jericho.

  “I’ve read the ‘Goat’ file,” she said after making the short walk from her cot to his. “Is even half of this true?”

  Jericho shrugged. “That’s what you’re going to find out,” he replied seriously before his voice turned playful. “Assuming, of course, that I may retain my freedom for the foreseeable future?”

  She was more than slightly put off by his apparent lack of concern regarding their collective situation, but she had managed to find some measure of acceptance in her own plight over the previous weeks aboard the ocean-going vessel. Masozi held the data slate up and gestured to it seriously, “This information suggests that a colonial governor—“

  “Has been acting in direct contravention to the betterment of his,” he interrupted before adding pointedly, “or, rather, her people, and has done so with what would seem to be reckless disregard for more than a few Sector Laws. I have actually read the file, Investigator,” he chided with a hint of sarcasm.

  Masozi very much
disliked being interrupted, but she held her tongue and continued, “These records even show what appears to be the T.E.’s system for identifying potential…Adjustments,” she reluctantly bit out the word.

  “As I said,” Jericho said in a conversational tone, but his eyes bored into her own while he did so, “I’m taking a big risk by including you in all of this.”

  “It doesn’t seem to be much of a risk,” she sniffed, hating the way the protestation sounded as it passed her lips. But despite her irritation with herself, she pressed on with what she had come to realize during her time in Benton’s container, “If I don’t at least appear to be playing along with you, you’ll just kill me and drop me into the water for the scrapers to deal with. It doesn’t seem to me that you’re taking any risks here, so please stop insulting my intelligence by suggesting that anything you’ve done to this point has exposed either of you.”

  Jericho’s eyes narrowed briefly before he chuckled. “There aren’t any out here,” he said simply.

  Her brow furrowed before lowering thunderously. “Aren’t any what?” she demanded as his laughter grew.

  He shook his head in mock bewilderment. “Scrapers,” he laughed, and Benton joined him briefly before Jericho added, “they only live along the coastlines. Out here, you’d be digested by what passes for jellyfish on this world…and I’m told that would be significantly more unpleasant than the quick death you’d get from a scraper.” He schooled his features before continuing just before she could retort, “But your point is well-taken. That’s why I’m letting you off the ship first—if that’s what you’d like, of course.”

  Masozi cocked her head before sneering. “You would have me test the port security. If I get caught, you won’t have to risk exposing yourselves, is that it? I’m not a moron,” she said acidly.

  “I don’t think you’re a moron,” Jericho said lightly. “If you had given me cause to believe that you are one,” Jericho paused and his eyes twinkled briefly, “we wouldn’t be speaking right now.”

  “Because what’s left of me would be coming out of a jellyfish’s ass?” Masozi retorted icily.

  A grin slowly spread across Jericho’s face, “You prove my point even better than I could, Investigator…which is why I’ll be giving you an assignment before you disembark—one you may choose either to accept or not. I’m not going to force you to do anything…that’s not how this works. If you decide to part company with me at the earliest convenience, I’ll respect that choice and promise not to pursue you.” A look of something between resignation and frustration crossed his face as he added, “I’m getting too old to go chasing after people who want, and genuinely deserve, to be left alone.”

  Masozi was uncertain if she should accept his words as genuine, or just an attempt to manipulate her. He had already admitted that he considered human psychology a simple matter to understand. In her mind, that was the same as confessing to proficiency in wielding it as a weapon.

  But the truth was she simply could not turn her back on what he had shown her. If even a fraction of the information in the ‘Goat’ file had been accurate then the Governor in question not only deserved to die—she deserved to die as quickly as possible. The conspiracy outlined in the Goat file was unprecedented in the history of the Chimera Sector

  And while all of it—the bombing of her apartment building, the fateful meeting with Chief Afolabi, and even the torrent of information which had been thrown at her since arriving in Benton’s secret lair—may have been nothing more than an elaborate attempt to manipulate her, she knew that in the end she had no choice but to see how far the whole thing went.

  “Fine,” she said tersely, “what did you have in mind?”

  Jericho tilted his head toward the data pad. “Each of the documents in the Goat file is cloned. One copy is the original, and the other has had the figures, names, locations, and all other identifying information scrambled so as to be unrecognizable at a glance,” he explained. “Transfer the scrambled copies to individual slates and have their contents verified as authentic by independent sources. The only authority required for validation is a public notarial license, so a lawyer, accountant, magistrate, or any one of three dozen other professionals will be able to do it for you for a modest, flat, fee.”

  “What will they be comparing the documents to?” she asked warily. “If all the data is scrambled then how can they be verifying anything?”

  “Every piece of evidence you’re holding,” he gestured to the pad, “contains a series of alphanumeric markers. Those markers indicate the chain of custody that the evidence has passed through on its way to the assigned Adjuster,” he said with a short, meaningful look before continuing, “all they’re doing is verifying that the document has, in fact, passed through the indicated chain. The evidence itself has already been confirmed to the point of reasonable certainty.”

  “You keep using that phrase,” she cut in, “you say ‘reasonable certainty,’ but that term isn’t a legally-recognized part of our public legal system. A person is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.”

  “Correction,” he said while holding up a finger, “a private citizen is innocent until proven guilty under our Sector’s laws. All public officials—including, in a limited capacity, one Investigator Masozi when she became a fully-fledged officer of the law—forgo that particular right when it comes to actions taken while in public office. Since a powerful bureaucrat might be able to manipulate the legal system for his or her own benefit, they must be held apart from it in these matters so as to minimize corruption.”

  “But there are trials every year for corrupt officials,” she argued. “Sentencing is carried out according to the same systems in place for all other types of criminal proceedings.”

  “Adjusters can’t always arrive at reasonable certainty when an Adjustment is authorized,” he replied with a shrug. “In those cases, the courts are often made aware of the collected evidence and it becomes the bureaucracy’s problem.”

  Masozi’s mouth fell open in momentary surprise, “Are you saying that the cases which go public are just the T.E.’s leftovers?”

  “Of course,” he replied dismissively. “Although to be fair, there are times when the voters become so enamored with an official that they don’t trigger an Adjustment.” He laced his fingers and pointed at the data pad in her hands, “Which has been the case for our soon-to-be-late Governor friend until quite recently.”

  Masozi could fully understand the public backlash against the Governor in question—a woman named Crissa Keno, who had been born Christopher Keno, second son of the firmly-entrenched Keno family which had ousted the previous regime of Governor Fernando Marquez amid a popular uprising some thirty years ago. That uprising had ended when the T.E. performed an Adjustment after finding sufficient evidence of corruption within Marquez’ regime, and the Keno clan had functionally assumed control over the small mining colony.

  Christopher Keno had undergone gender reassignment in ‘his’ twenties—which was not an altogether unheard of procedure for the wealthy to have—and the newly-corrected Crissa had promptly given birth to a pair of children. Some ten years later, after becoming the colony’s media darling—often dubbed the ‘Queen’ of all things media by her detractors, the majority of whom were not residents of the colony over which she resided—Crissa began to compete in the most violent forms of martial arts sanctioned throughout the Sector. Most of her athletic accomplishments had been roundly celebrated by her constituents as blazing a trail for gender-corrected individuals everywhere.

  “I hope that the…unusual circumstances surrounding Ms. Keno,” Masozi said slowly, “aren’t the cause for this requested Adjustment?”

  Jericho snorted derisively. “’Unusual circumstances’ are irrelevant to an Adjuster,” he said with a hard look which he held for several seconds before continuing, “the potential corruption indicated on that pad would easily outweigh my entire career’s accumulated Adjustment value. This particular c
ontract has been highly sought-after by every T.E. Adjustor for that very purpose.”

  Masozi suspected that she was supposed to ask what ‘accumulated Adjustment value’ meant, but she was sick of being spoon-fed information. When she failed to make that particular query, an odd look flashed over Jericho’s features before he stood abruptly from his cot.

  “When we make dock, Benton and I will remain aboard the Esmerelda for three days,” he explained. “The ship will leave port on the fourth day, and I’ll disembark at that time to take care of other business while you follow up on the Keno paperwork. It should take you about a week if you stay on task, and Benton will supply you with travel documents and enough credits for food, lodging, and the notarial seals. So if you decide to turn us in, I’d advise you to do it before then.”

  Masozi very much doubted the two of them would wait much longer than it took for her to leave eyesight before egressing the cargo vessel, but it wasn’t a point she cared to consider. She had already decided to investigate Governor Keno and her unconventional rise to power before deciding on a future course of action. “Fine,” she quipped, “but in case you’ve forgotten, I am a wanted fugitive. By now my image and record will have been disseminated to every public office from Presidential Security down to local Pest Controllers. How do you propose I go about this ‘assignment’ when doing so will require me to walk past half the facial-recognition and retinal-scanning systems in Aegis?!”

  Jericho tilted his head toward Benton. “He’s got that part covered; by the time you get on the streets, the locals won’t be looking for you.”

  Feeling anything but assured, she turned and made her way back to her own cot with an impotent glare on her face.

  She knew that to argue would only invite danger, so she kept her mouth shut and took solace in the reality that if they had simply wished her dead, they would have never made contact with her.

  But Masozi could trust literally nothing else she had learned about them to be true.