Ure Infectus

by Caleb Wachter

  Jericho shook his head. “Your people are dying. I’ll wait my turn.”

  Jeffrey Charles’ eyes flashed and he set his jaw as he said, “My people died because they were under orders to stand tall. Those orders came from a higher authority than you or I—and they included seeing to your safety above anyone else’s,” he added with a growl. “So either report to my sickbay as quickly as you can get there, or I’ll drag you down there myself.”

  “You can’t take me,” Jericho quipped, matching the man’s glare with one of his own, “you never could.”

  Jeffrey ground his teeth before looking pointedly down at Jericho’s stump. “Maybe I couldn’t before, but unless you report to sickbay that’s likely changed—more or less permanently.”

  Jericho wanted to argue, but the truth was his cousin was right. “Fine,” he quipped, “I’ll go see mommy and get this little booboo taken care of.” Jeffrey Charles had been a hell of a whiner when he was young, always complaining about ‘booboos’ and his cousins—including Jericho—had ridiculed him mercilessly for it while they were growing up.

  “Don’t go there, Jericho,” Charles warned as Jericho took a step toward the lift. He shook his head solemnly when Jericho shot him a wary look, “Not today…I just lost some irreplaceable crew.”

  Jericho nodded after a moment’s consideration. “Fair enough,” he allowed. “Your people did a hell of a job here today, Jeff.”

  “I know they did,” Charles replied stiffly before relaxing and gesturing to the damage reports streaming across the main viewer. “I just hope this was all worth it…there’s no turning back now.”

  “It will only be worth it if we make it so,” Jericho said, quoting one of Hadden’s favored sayings.

  “Well said,” Captain Charles ground out as Jericho entered the lift and made for sickbay.

  “How is she?” Jericho asked the doctor as she came out of the ship’s surprisingly well-appointed surgical suite.

  The doctor removed her cap and gown, which she then tossed in a nearby bin and rubbed her neck. “We operated for seventeen consecutive hours,” she replied. “I lost two patients because we were in there—“

  “How is she?” Jericho repeated evenly. He couldn’t blame the woman for her frustration, but he didn’t have time to hold her hand.

  The doctor fixed him with a steely gaze. “Her central nervous system was relatively unaffected and her internal organs mostly came through unscathed. Her right arm and leg will recover quickly enough, as well,” she said before sighing. “The left arm is going to be touch and go, but I’m reasonably confident she’ll experience a complete recovery with a full course of physical therapy. I’m afraid there was nothing we could do for the left leg,” she said heavily. “The nerves were too badly damaged and that damage spread to the surrounding musculature…that corrosive agent was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It turned her own body’s systems against itself and she literally began to self-digest; her left femur was essentially liquid calcium by the time we opened the leg up and there was literally nothing left of her connective and neural tissues.”

  Jericho nodded, more or less relieved at the prognosis. “When will she regain consciousness?”

  “Not for several days at least,” she replied as she rubbed her eyes. “The suit placed her nervous system in a kind of physiological stasis using advanced drugs that supposedly hadn’t passed the drawing boards back at H.E. One.” She shook her head adamantly without taking her eyes off Jericho’s own, “I can’t risk pulling her out of it any faster since we don’t know enough about the pharmacokinetics involved; there’s a good chance we could cause a chain reaction in her synapses and render her irreversibly brain dead if we push it any harder.”

  “That’s fine,” Jericho said as he exhaled a pent-up sigh. “No, that’s more than fine…that’s outstanding,” he said appreciatively. “What are her treatment options?”

  The doctor nodded slowly, as though considering something. “We can attempt to re-grow an organic limb for her, and the Kongming’s got the equipment to do that,” she said hesitantly, “but any more information than that is strictly between me and my patient.”

  “Of course it is,” Jericho agreed, realizing he had overstepped his bounds. “Thank you, Doctor,” he said as he turned to leave.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” she asked with a surprised note in her voice. When he turned around he saw her looking pointedly at the stump of his left arm, the dressing of which was soaked through with blood.

  “I guess you’re right,” Jericho said with a dark laugh. He had been so relieved that Masozi would pull through that he had forgotten his own position in line for the surgical suite’s use. “Well…then what are my options?” he asked coyly.

  The doctor gave him a scolding look. “Fortunately for you, the fragments of your arm weren’t a total loss; we’ve cleaned them the best we could and put them in cryo. A full reconstruction will probably only require a new thumb, since the old one was too damaged to reconstruct. Of course,” she added pointedly, “it would likely be simpler, and more practical, to grow you a new one.”

  “That arm and I have been through a lot,” Jericho replied with a shake of his head, “I’d prefer to keep my original parts if it’s all the same to you…but is that all you’ve got in cryo-stasis?” Jericho asked. He had suddenly become fearful that the medical team on Philippa had disregarded his instruction to preserve Agent Stiglitz’s head.

  “No,” the doctor chided as her expression darkened, “we’ve got the other…remains here as well and they’ve already been frozen.”

  “Show me,” Jericho said, unwilling to fret the issue in the coming hours and days.

  The doctor led him to a trio of cryo-stasis tubes. One of them held a crewmember who had been horribly burned during the battle with the Alexander, another had what looked to be what remained of Jericho’s arm, and the third did indeed contain Agent Stiglitz’ head.

  “Thank you,” he said before gesturing to his arm. “How long to reattach what’s left of my arm?”

  “The re-attachment surgery will likely take between ten and sixteen hours,” she replied. “But the new thumb will require several weeks to grow, during which time your new nerves will require daily grafts of fresh tissue in order to reform your peripheral nerves throughout the limb.”

  “When will you perform the surgery?” he asked.

  The doctor shook her head, “Doctor Maturin will be handling your surgery.” She gestured to a man wearing a surgical cap and gown who had just come out of the surgical suite, “You remember him, I take it?”

  Jericho did recognize him as the same ‘medic’ who had worked on his arm during the shuttle’s flight to Abaca. “You’re a neurovascular surgeon?” he asked disbelievingly, but it actually made sense. The man hadn’t acted like any field medic Jericho had ever seen, and just then Jericho was more than glad to have him aboard.

  “Among other things,” the other man agreed, his expression suggesting there was even more to this man than Jericho knew. “Let’s prep you so we can get to work; I’d like to salvage as much of your remaining tissue as possible and every second we waste is less material I’ll have to work with.”

  “Did you check him out?” Jericho asked the woman doctor.

  “Hadden has a complete file on Doctor Maturin,” she replied easily. “He is, for lack of a better term, ‘one of us’.”

  Jericho nodded. “That’s good enough for me,” he said with a lopsided grin as he gestured to his arm’s disparate fragments, “do you think you know where all the pieces go?”

  Doctor Maturin snorted in amusement. “I’ll work it out,” he deadpanned.

  Chapter XXXI: Promotion

  “Are you certain, Eve?” Jericho asked as they made their final approach to Virgin’s atmosphere aboard the Neil deGrasse Tyson. He had left Masozi in her coma aboard the Zhuge Liang and transferred the Eve fragment which had downloaded into the Tyson’s computer back into its original
‘receptacle,’ which was the fake nuclear bomb housing.

  “I am, Jericho,” she replied with certainty in her digital voice, which was fed through his earpiece, “I’m trying to access Benton’s last message drops but everything’s coming up blank. It’s like he just vanished.”

  “That doesn’t sound like him,” Jericho said grimly as he tested his left arm. The sensory nerves were still mostly useless, but the surgical team had managed to give him partial use of the limb after just two days of intensive nerve stimulation. He had insisted on the difficult—and impressively painful—procedure before agreeing to have his arm re-attached. Where he was going, Jericho knew he would need at least partial use of his left arm if there was any chance of him coming back out alive.

  “It isn’t,” Eve replied in a like tone, “Benton and I have…routines we stick to on the other’s behalf. He has failed to undertake several of his obligatory duties for at least one week—fully double the previous maximum elapsed time during which he has failed to do so.”

  “That’s nearly as long as we’ve been gone from Virgin,” Jericho mused. “I have a hard time believing they got to him, Eve.”

  “As do I,” she agreed, “but I find the likelihood of any alternative explanation extremely remote. You do not understand our commitment to each other, Jericho; he would not simply abandon these duties. The fallout would likely be…” she paused for several seconds before finishing in a serious tone which Jericho had never heard her use, “catastrophic.”

  “Are you feeling ok, Eve?” Jericho asked warily.

  “I…” Eve began hesitantly, “I require Benton’s assistance to return to my previous parameters. I fear this mission has been more disruptive to my personality matrix than Benton and I had anticipated.”

  “Should I deactivate you?” Jericho asked as the Tyson entered the atmosphere of Virgin and the craft began to brake against the atmosphere.

  “I do not believe that would be necessary,” Eve replied.

  “You just…don’t sound like your usual, spunky self,” he observed with equal parts curiosity and irritation. He desperately needed a qualified operator, and with Benton out of the picture his options were extremely limited. Each of his other operators had failed to respond to his missives, which meant they had collectively been killed, captured, or driven so far underground that they weren’t interested in earning a year’s worth of credits for a day’s work.

  “As I said,” Eve replied with what sounded like tension in her voice, at least to Jericho’s trained ear, “I am in need of…maintenance. I cannot explain further until Benton’s status has been confirmed—a task I am currently undertaking using my increasingly limited resources.”

  “You just tell me if you’re not up to this,” Jericho said evenly.

  “I appreciate your concern, Jericho,” Eve said curtly, “but I will be able to perform this mission.”

  “All right,” he relented as the shuttle’s trajectory leveled out and the shuttle began its final approach to Aegis. “Send up the message now, Eve; I need to arrange a meeting with my ‘boss’.”

  “Message upload has begun,” she acknowledged. Several seconds passed before she confirmed, “Upload successful.”

  “Scan the usual channels,” he instructed as he made his way to the cabin. “I want to know the second he replies.”

  He hadn’t even made it to the locker at the back of the cabin when Eve said, “He has already done so, Jericho.”

  “Read it to me,” he said as he withdrew an overcoat from the locker, along with a data link. The monomolecular blade was there inside the locker, as was Captain Sasaki’s knife, along with a handful of small firearms. While Jericho knew that this meeting would likely be his last with the senior Adjuster, he trusted his knowledge of the man enough that he didn’t anticipate a need for a sidearm.

  “Congratulations are in order—same meeting place as soon as you land,” she replied promptly.

  “Is that it?” he pressed, his wits teetering on a knife’s edge as he waited for her belated reply.

  “That is all, Jericho,” she replied confidently. “The message has all the standard ‘stop’ symbols to indicate its complete transmission.”

  Jericho nodded as he released a breath. “Then I’m going to need something from you, Eve,” he said as he closed the locker’s door.

  “I am happy to be of service,” she said evenly, and Jericho decidedly disliked this new ‘serious’ Eve considerably more than the previous, spunky, sex-bomb version. But he was out of options, so he explained to her what he needed, and she seemed confident she could produce the desired effect with less than an hour of preparation. He established the activation phrase he would use, as well as a protocol tree for if events spiraled out of control.

  “Holland,” Jericho said as he approached the alien bouncer outside the same foul, dingy club where he had met Obunda previously.

  “Jericho,” the insect-looking alien replied via its vocalizer. “You can use the fire escape and go straight to the roof.”

  Jericho hadn’t actually expected that, but he nodded slowly as the alien known to the non-bigoted locals as ‘Jesse Holland’ gestured to a nearby fire escape staircase that slowly lowered itself to the ground.

  “Thanks, Jesse,” Jericho said with a nod.

  “Any time, Jericho,” the alien replied with its equivalent of a nod before returning to its duties.

  Jericho climbed the ladder slowly, but before long he was standing atop the roof of the structure beneath the smog-filled sky of New Lincoln. Obunda was standing beside one of the building’s several roof-mounted heat vents. The club’s interior was a brutally hot place, especially considering most alien life forms which frequented it preferred significantly hotter environs than humans generally tolerated. But the human patrons often claimed such an extremely high temperature merely enhanced the experience, so the vents generally remained closed during all but the hottest nights.

  “Well done on Philippa, Jericho,” Obunda congratulated as Jericho neared the halfway pointed between the stairs and the heat vent he stood beside. “Why don’t you stop right there, Adjuster?”

  Jericho did as he advised and raised his hands slightly away from his sides. “I’m just here for protocol, Obunda,” he said levelly, “you sign off on the Mark and I’ll get out of your hair.”

  “A bald joke?” Obunda quipped with a shake of his nearly-smooth head. “You’re getting old, Jericho, and frankly I’m wondering if you’ve gone senile after what you pulled in Abaca. Toss me the Mark and I’ll check its authenticity, then we can get down to…other matters.”

  Jericho produced the Mark—the same one with the contents which Masozi had had spent a week getting notarized in Aegis, and had also downloaded several files from Tera St. Murray’s information hub—and laid it down on the flat, concrete roof. He then kicked it as gently as he could toward Obunda, and was grateful when it came to a stop just a few feet from the other man.

  Obunda never took his eyes off Jericho as he knelt down to retrieve the Mark, and after he had done so he withdrew a data link from his pocket and ostensibly verified the contents of the Mark. Throughout the process, he only once glanced down at the link before reaffixing Jericho with his gaze

  “There’s a problem with this Mark, Adjuster,” Obunda said after a lengthy, tense silence.

  “Oh?” Jericho replied. “What might that be?”

  “The serial number for this unit is the same one we had registered for the Cantwell Adjustment,” Obunda replied as he placed the Mark in his pocket and shook his head. “You are getting old, old man.”

  “That’s not possible,” Jericho said as a doubtful tremor entered his voice. “I verified those contents personally—each and every file—and then had them notarized in Aegis!” he protested, his eyes snapping back and forth wildly.

  “Yes, you did,” Obunda sighed. “This is a young man’s game, Jericho,” he said as he took a single step toward Jericho while looking over the tops
of his horn-rimmed glasses. “But you’ve done good work in your career…and I’d hate to sully the Agency’s good name with news of this disgrace.”

  “Wh…” Jericho began hesitantly before threading his voice with iron, “what are you suggesting?”

  “I’m suggesting that you retire, Adjuster,” Obunda said as he brought the data slate up and began to tap away on the screen. “You aren’t the first disgrace the Timent Electorum initiative has produced, and you won’t be the last, but in light of our mutual history I’m willing to help you disappear.”

  “Is this…” Jericho began, his eyebrows rising in disbelief, “a negotiation? Are you offering to cover up this mistake?”

  Obunda’s eyes narrowed. “I’d kill you, right here and right now, but I hate wasting a valuable resource,” he said in an easy tone that belied his tense posture, “and, for all your faults, you’ve proven to be that time and again. I’m guessing we’ll find a future use for you—but only if you agree to disappear until I can sort out what that might be.”

  Jericho appeared to consider the matter before shaking his head resolutely. “We’re Adjusters, Obunda,” he said slowly, “we don’t negotiate—we Adjust. If someone made a mistake, they need to be accountable for that error. We aren’t politicians,” he said heavily, “but that’s exactly what you’re sounding like right now.”

  “Times change, old man,” Obunda said as he relaxed fractionally. “We either change with them or we go extinct. It’s your call: learn the new rules of the game or die playing by the old ones.”

  Jericho stood there as a gust of wind picked up and blew his coattails wildly to the side before dying down. His shoulder slumped and Obunda’s eyes flashed minutely as Jericho lowered his own gaze to the rooftop and said, “Since we’re being so civil for a change, I thought I’d make a confession…”

  Obunda took a step forward and said, “What might that be?”

  Jericho’s eyes rose slowly to meet Obunda’s and he said, “I’ve never cared for politicians.”