Ure Infectus (Imperium Cicernus Book 4) (3 page)

Jericho had already switched conveyances six times over the course of nearly half an hour when his handheld link vibrated within his pocket. He had not expected any inbound communications, so he was more than slightly apprehensive as he entered his password to the data pad. The device also doubled as his sole connection to the vast information grid which pervaded every aspect of life in a city like New Lincoln—a grid which Jericho believed humanity could very well do without.

The author of the message was familiar to him; it had been sent by his most recent operator, Wladimir Benton. Jericho had not yet transferred the agreed-upon sum of money to Benton’s account, but he still had half an hour remaining in their agreed upon window so he cautiously opened the message.

The screen was filled with a series of images taken by what looked to be the government building’s security cameras, and each of the images was centered on a tall, athletic, almost black-skinned woman likely in her early thirties. She was wearing a nearly skin-tight bodyglove with the badge of an Investigator situated over her left breast.

There was an attached video file, and he opened it to see that same woman moving between a pair of forensic examiners who were collecting bits of shattered glass from the pavement where he had landed after executing his contract. His lip quirked in amusement as she took a forensics monocle from one of the examiners and before kneeling beside the very spot where he had landed after taking his very own leap of faith from the Mayor’s high-rise office. She looked intently at the patch of concrete before standing and returning the monocle to the examiner, and the video froze on a close-up image of the Investigator’s strong, yet surprisingly feminine, features.

The image minimized and a flood of text began to stream across the pad’s screen, including her name, birthdate, period of employment, civil record, legal record, and anything else a person might wish to know about another. Most of it was utterly uninteresting—until it came to the section regarding familial ties, where a particular name was highlighted which caught Jericho’s attention.

He considered the implications of that connection as the woman’s record disappeared and was replaced with a line of text, which read:
The info’s free, my main man. But if you
be wantin’
a Guardian Angel package it’s gonna cost you standard. You want I should pop a halo up on her, just tack the cheddar onto my other order and she’ll be under my Papa Benton’s wing before dinner—AJ

It really wasn’t a question in his mind of whether or not he should do as Benton suggested. Thankfully for Jericho, he had just enough money left in the contingency fund he had established for that night’s contract that he could cover a Guardian Angel package. That package included, among other things, full-time surveillance of her person, as well as a comprehensive analysis of each person within six degrees of separation from her. It was a resource-intensive and technically difficult thing to do without access to a whole team of operatives, but Wladimir ‘AJ’ Benton had never failed to deliver in the past so Jericho knew it would be money well-spent.

Jericho called up the financial account containing the last of the operation’s budget and arranged to have it attached to the significantly larger sum of money he had already earmarked for the operator’s assistance to that point in the Cantwell Contract. After verifying the amounts and the destination account, he executed the transaction. When that was completed he sighed as he deactivated the handheld link.

“I hate these things,” he grumbled as he removed the battery and found a small wad of soft, rubbery material inside the link’s slender housing. He pressed his finger against the wad of chewing gum-like material until an acrid smell wafted up into his nostrils. He replaced the battery into the device, reassembled the two halves of the link, and tossed it out the window of the vehicle before settling back into his seat for a few moments of quiet contemplation.

It seemed that the universe had just presented him with a unique opportunity…and he would likely need to move quickly in order to prevent that opportunity from being eliminated.

Several hours after finishing with what turned out to be an
utterly routine, maddeningly frustrating examination of her recent caseload,
Investigator Masozi sat down at her desk and activated her access terminal. She
knew that with so much elapsed time there was no point in returning to the
Mayor’s office to collect evidence. Anything of interest had either already
been catalogued, or—in what was a more than slightly disturbing possibility she
would have never considered possible prior to that night—removed from the scene
in some unthinkable attempt at a cover-up.

Masozi flipped through the programs on her terminal and came
to the local news feeds. She stopped at one when she recognized the government
building housing the Mayor’s offices, where a short, entirely-too-pale-skinned
man was reporting with the caption ‘Mayor, Father of Three, Murdered’ beneath
him. After attuning her earpiece to the audio feed, she listened intently to
the reporter.

“Precisely three hours and twenty six minutes ago,” the
effeminate-looking man said in a shrill, accented voice as he fought
desperately to speak through only one side of his mouth, “Mayor Thomas Cantwell
was brutally murdered within his own office by an as-yet unidentified gunman.
Details are still coming in, but authorities have ruled out nothing at this
point. Chief Investigator Adewali Afolabi spoke with me just moments ago.”

The feed switched to a shot of Chief Afolabi standing
outside the elevator, and the reporter asked, “Chief Investigator, there have
been suggestions that this could have been an inside job; that perhaps there
were elements within the administration itself with whom Mayor Cantwell had
made unseen enemies. Can you give us an official comment at this time?”

Afolabi drew himself up slightly and Masozi felt her stomach
churn at seeing the man giving what was, by all rights,
her
interview.
“It’s still very early in the process, but we have received no indications to
this point that what you describe may be the case,” the Chief Investigator
replied promptly and professionally.

“We are nearing the end of this election campaign,” the
reporter continued, switching gears easily, “and Mayor Cantwell looked to be a
virtual lock for re-election in two weeks’ time. Does the New Lincoln
Investigative Unit allow for the possibility that this brutal, cold-blooded act
might have been authored by the Mayor’s chief opponent and Mayoral candidate in
her own right, District Attorney Jennifer Zellweger?”

There was the barest hint of a pause, during which the
Chief’s expression flinched almost imperceptibly before he replied, “I think it
would be irresponsible to rule anything out at this point in the
investigation.”

The feed switched back to the reporter standing on the
sidewalk, and the caption switched to read, ‘Mayor Murdered by Rival?’

“There you have it; Chief Afolabi’s investigation thus far
has clearly revealed some disturbing evidence. While this reporter cannot in
good conscience make supposition, what is clear is that the NLIU will be
looking into all possibilities as this investigation extends into the night
and, in all probability, far beyond.
Bridget, back to you.”

Masozi cut the feed in stunned disbelief. Initially she had
believed that Afolabi’s usurpation of her authority had been a simple attempt
to steal the limelight—which she probably could have understood, at least on
some level.

But after listening to the interview with her own ears, and
not once hearing the Chief Investigator mentioned the presence of the Timent
Electorum insignia which had been placed—with obvious deliberation—in front of
the Mayor’s body, her mind began to wander down a dangerous path. She had dedicated her life to restoring order
and balance to the lives of the Virgin System’s citizenry. It was a largely thankless job, but it was
one she had embraced from a very young age because deep down, she sought to see
justice served above all else.

If Chief Afolabi was actively covering up the evidence which
showed Cantwell’s death to have been a publicly-sanctioned hit executed by the
Timent Electorum then he was complicit in whatever crimes the Mayor may have
committed. Worse, he was standing in the
way of justice being served, and Masozi knew that her entire society had been
built upon the principle of justice for all—regardless of social strata.

Her thoughts continuing down such a dark path, she opened a
new interface in her terminal and began to call up information on the Timent
Electorum itself since all she really remembered about it was what she had
learned as a child. The ultra-secretive Timent Electorum agency only rarely
made its actions public knowledge, and when it did so it was for a specific
reason and done in accordance with the agency’s mandate.

Before her search could yield any fruit, a familiar window
overrode her current one and required her to complete a questionnaire comprised
of fifty questions. They were all multiple choice and they were simply a part
of everyday life on Virgin; the government had decentralized all voting
activity when the Chimera Sector had been cut off from the rest of the Imperium
two hundred years earlier. That decentralization had been made in order to
streamline the elective process, as well as remove the potential for harassment
or intimidation.

She knew that most of the questions she was being asked were
dummies, or blanks, since some of them required her to compare a handful of
grocery products to each other and others asked her to comment on the supposed
sexual preferences of various public figures. Some others required her to rank
various media personalities according to certain criteria. But there were a few
which were quite possibly very real initiatives and statutes for which she was
now presented with the opportunity to cast her vote.

Working through the window’s fifty questions took only a few
minutes, after which her previous program returned to the fore of her terminal.
Her search brought her to the foundational passage upon which the Timent
Electorum was founded, which every child of her world learned but most, by her
age, had forgotten:

The First Right of the Body Politic: Timent Electorum

The body politic may initiate
inquest into, and punish by summary capital punishment without the privilege of
a civilian trial: corruption, tyranny, and betrayal of the highest order by
those officials who have been elected to public office, appointed by an elected
official to public office, or have received a position of public office via
heredity. Furthermore, all offices must be assigned locally, with direct
responsibility assigned according to each Star System’s will. Official
positions may only exist when the actions of the officials holding them can be
directly measured by the impact those actions have on the citizens for whom the
official was selected to represent.

Each sovereign Star System of
the Chimera Sector may, during these foundational years of the Chimera Sector’s
birth, determine for itself the thresholds to be met before an inquest is
initiated, but once that inquest has begun the agent empowered by the community
must carry it out without fail. This agent must never be funded by taxation,
nor should the agent answer to any higher power once commissioned by the body
politic, including the body politic itself.

A productive balance of power in
a democracy, and the requisite degree of efficiency for sustainability, is only
possible when the leaders fear the voters at least as much as the voters fear
the leaders. This is the foundational principle which will guide our Sector to
achieve a measure of harmony unseen in human history.

This, the First Right of our
newly-established representative government, may not be removed or altered in
any way, shape, or form; nor may it be amended, superseded, made dependent upon
a subsequent Right or other measure, or overridden by any bill, law, or other
form of mandate, either official or unofficial. Any attempt to impede the body
politic’s ability to impose their will upon the officials chosen to represent
their interests may be viewed as actionable under this First Right.

No other tenets regarding the
upholding of this Right may be made public knowledge including, but not limited
to, the mechanisms by which the body politic identifies corruption, tyranny, or
betrayal.

The passage went on even further, but before Masozi could
read any more she received an intra-office alert which directed her to report
to the Chief Investigator’s office.

She was surprised that he had returned to the NLIU offices
so quickly, but she was more than willing to report to her superior
Investigator and get some answers.

The door to his office was already open when she arrived,
and she stepped inside to see Chief Investigator Afolabi sitting behind his
desk with a short stack of data pads in front of him. “Investigator, close the
door,” he said in an unyielding voice, and she did as instructed. Afolabi
gestured to the chair opposite his own, and she sat down while a dozen
questions raced through her mind. But before the first one could escape her
lips, the Chief picked up one of the data pads and said, “I have a new case for
you.”

Masozi leaned forward and accepted the pad, quickly perused
its contents and found it to be an altogether typical murder-suicide which had
taken place an hour earlier on the other side of town. Even going by just what
the uniforms had reported, it was an open-and-shut case that would require
little more than the NLIU’s seal of approval before it was filed away. “Chief,”
she said after looking up from the data pad, “any Junior Investigator could
handle the case on this pad. What is going on?”

Afolabi’s eyes narrowed in silent calculation and he began
to nod slowly, as though arriving at some important conclusion. “I’ve spoken
with the Interplanetary Unit recently and, though I wanted to wait a little
longer before telling you, they’ve got a position opening in at the end of the
month and your name was at the top of their list for possible replacement
candidates.”

Masozi’s eyes widened in surprise.
She liked to think of herself as a dedicated public servant and
better-than-average Investigator—one who might even make Chief in another
decade or so—but the Interplanetary Unit generally required at least a half
decade of additional service than what she had logged before an applicant would
even be considered. And Chief Afolabi had just said they requested her
by name
?!

It took her a moment before she realized that it was too
good to be real, which meant it was almost certainly a bribe—despite her
profession as an Investigator, Masozi had never been good at reading
people. She preferred to analyze the
evidence and leave the human element as minimized as possible when working a
case.

When she understood the gesture for what it really was, her
eyes narrowed. “Chief,” she said tightly, “I am a loyal servant of NLIU; I
would never betray the people who have placed their faith in me. Frankly,” she
continued through clenched teeth, “I’m surprised to hear such an offer from
you, of all people, sir.”

Afolabi’s eyes flared briefly before a smile broadened
across his face and he began to clap deliberately. “Well done, Investigator;
you’ve passed the test,” he said warmly before tilting his head toward the
door.

Her entire body tensed up as she turned and saw a man
wearing the all-black bodyglove of the Interplanetary Investigations Unit of
the Chimera Sector. He was shorter than average, but judging by his movements
and musculature he was a supreme physical specimen.

“Meet Special Agent Hugo Stiglitz, assigned to the IIU,”
Afolabi explained as he stood from his chair, prompting Masozi to do likewise.
“His direct jurisdiction includes New Lincoln and the nearest dozen ports. He’s here in
an…
unofficial
capacity.”

Masozi looked back and forth between the two men as Agent
Stiglitz approached with a black-gloved hand extended. “Investigator Masozi,”
he said in a perfectly pitched, tenor’s voice with an accent she could not
quite place,
“
it’s a pleasure.”

“Agent Stiglitz,” she said guardedly after shaking his hand.
The strength she felt in his fingers was incredible, and she was all-too-aware
that he was letting her feel just how strong he was without going so far as to
cause pain. “Would somebody mind explaining to me what is going on here?”

Stiglitz gave a quick look to Chief Afolabi, who gestured
for the shorter man to commence. “My unit has been tracking a terrorist for
several months now,” Agent Stiglitz explained. “He has eluded capture at
several carefully-engineered traps—traps which only the members of my team were
aware of prior to being sprung. Each time we have failed to capture him he has
gone on to execute at least one high-value target within two days’ time.”

“A terrorist?”
Masozi asked
,
intrigued despite the immense tension she felt in light of
the night’s events.

“Yes,” Stiglitz replied as he clasped his hands behind his
back and began to pace stiffly, “we do not know his true affiliations, but he
has left a signature behind at each of the murder scenes. I believe you are
familiar with it?”

She furrowed her brow momentarily before realizing what he
meant. “Are you saying that the Mayor’s Adjustment isn’t a sanctioned reprisal?”
she asked after rolling the thought around for a few moments. “He’s using the
Timent Electorum as cover?”

“Precisely,” Chief Afolabi said with a curt nod. “But this
presents a few unique problems…”

“Indeed,” Agent Stiglitz agreed, “since the Timent Electorum
is a decentralized organization, it is impossible to verify whether or not
these murders are, in fact, community-sanctioned reprisals. They may be merely
the wanton acts of terrorists who are bent on unbalancing our political system
for some as-yet unknown purpose.”