Ure Infectus (Imperium Cicernus Book 4) (31 page)

“You made good time, honey,” Eve congratulated in her
insufferable tone, “now we need to make our way to the Governor’s dressing
room; the first intermission should come between thirty and forty minutes from
now. My latest data packet suggests the Governor’s security should be
relatively light.”

“Why is that?” Masozi asked after taking just two steps up
the ladder. “Why would the Governor’s security be light on such a public
occasion?”

Eve’s image looked to be examining something small but she
shrugged after a few moments. “Doesn’t say, babe,” she said with a hint of
surprise. “That’s odd…although it does say that as soon as we go through that
hatch there’ll be no coming back this way. You sure you want to do this?” she
asked intently.

Masozi actually stopped to consider the question. Something
wasn’t right about the situation, but try as she might she simply couldn’t put
the pieces together. She knew there was something she had missed, or some
connection she had failed to make, but even after several minutes of silent
contemplation she was unable to determine what that might have been.

“Yes,” she said with a sharp nod, “Governor Keno is, as far
as I can tell, one of the few truly evil people in this System…and regardless
of her involvement in my own situation, she deserves to pay the price of
betraying her people. If she isn’t made to respect our society’s most sacred
law,” she continued, realizing as she did so that she was trying to convince
herself of the truth of the words she spoke, “then what good are those laws?”

Eve, who had been listening intently, shrugged her shoulders
lightly. “It’s all the same to me, bakeshop,” she said indifferently. “But
personally I’m hoping we see this through; our last protocols won’t come online
until we step through that hatch and I can’t wait to see how much fun they’ll
be!”

Masozi shook her head in bewilderment as she resumed her
climb up the ladder. “Remind me to have your program modified if we’re supposed
to be spending this much time together in the future,” she quipped.

“Hey!” Eve protested, placing her hands on her hips and
glaring. “I don’t talk about rearranging your brain cells, do I?”

In spite of herself, Masozi laughed at the joke just as her
fingers closed around the hatch. After just a second Eve managed to open it and
they stepped through.

Just when the hatch closed and Masozi took a look at her
surroundings, realization seemed to slam into her mind with the force of a
falling asteroid and when she realized what she had been missing she felt a
glacier of cold fury begin to grind through the pit of her stomach as she realized
she had been manipulated.

“You bastard,” she growled before taking a steadying breath
and grimly setting off down the corridor which Eve had indicated in the HUD.

“Wake up, Adjuster,” Jericho heard Agent Stiglitz’s voice.
He was vaguely aware that he was lying on his side, and that his right arm was
free of the bulky restraints he had been wearing just before losing
consciousness.

He looked down numbly at his left arm and saw that it was no
longer there. After a moment he realized that
most
of it was still
there, but that it now ended just below the elbow in a black,
chemically-cauterized, stump.

Jericho’s mind was nearly overcome with the pain, but it
wasn’t just the sensation that threatened to overwhelm what remained of his
reason. Neither was the emotional trauma associated with losing a limb—a
reality he instantly processed and accepted upon seeing the mangled remains of
his forearm and hand lying in pieces on the floor.

The truth was the simple, physiological insult to his body’s
systems were becoming too much. Soon even Agent Stiglitz’s
carefully-administered treatments would be unable to neutralize them. Jericho
knew he was nearing the end of his ability to endure the man’s torture, and he
looked up with something more akin to desperation than he had ever expected to
feel as he checked the light above the door.

His heart skipped a beat when he saw it was still red, and
he very nearly collapsed into a whimpering heap—but then the light flashed blue.
He wasn’t sure he had seen it, so he fixed his eyes on it as Agent Stiglitz
came over and reached down beneath Jericho’s armpits to prop him up on the bed.

The light flashed blue again, and just before Agent
Stiglitz’s eyes tracked with Jericho’s the light returned to its previous red.
Jericho knew that his suffering was about to come to an end, one way or
another, and that was enough for him to cling to the hope that not everything
he had put in motion would be wasted.

“Your neurochemistry is close to a cascade failure,” Agent
Stiglitz said calmly, as though he was discussing the menu at a restaurant
prior to ordering. “Your conditioning has proven impressive, which means that
you of all people should know there is only so much that an unmodified human
can withstand.” Agent Stiglitz knelt beside Jericho, projecting supreme
confidence as he placed a hand on Jericho’s shoulder. “There is no shame in
breaking, Jericho,” he said soothingly, and Jericho knew that even with his
newfound hope that he would succumb to the man’s brutal assault on his
faculties. “Give me what I need and I’ll end this,” he said, his voice sounding
almost musical as he added, “I’ll do it quickly; I hate to see you suffer this
way.”

Jericho looked down at the bed and began to whimper before
recollecting himself and nodding. “All right,” he said tremulously as his
shoulders slumped, “I’ll tell you…but I need you to do something for me.”

Stiglitz gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze and he said,
“Say no more.” The Agent stood and withdrew a single, half-smoked cigar from a
tiny pocket near his waist and smelled it, seeming to savor the aroma and
Jericho instantly recognized it as the same cigar he had left in Mayor
Cantwell’s office—the same one he’d put out on that absurd chair just before
blowing the sitting Mayor’s head off. “Despite what you may think, I have a
deep-seated respect for traditionalists,” Stiglitz said as he neatly trimmed
the end of the cigar after rolling it into a near-perfect cylinder, “it’s only
by examining them that we can see where we have gone wrong in the past.” When
he was finished, he held the cigar before Jericho and said, “Incidentally, I
learned everything I needed to know about you from this cigar…did you know
that?”

Jericho shook his head as the pain in his ruined, left arm
began to throb uncontrollably. "You wouldn't have a light, would you?” he
asked bleakly.

Stiglitz smiled in satisfaction, clearly having predicted
the request as he produced a single match from the same compartment. “Of
course; what else are friends for?”

Just as Stiglitz moved to light the match, Jericho said,
“Ure Infectus.”

There was a click from the head of the bed just as Jericho
began to dive toward it. Stiglitz’s eyes tracked him perfectly, his
heavily-modified neurology easily coping with the apparently desperate lunge,
and he made to intercept Jericho. But Stiglitz’s motions were surprisingly
slow—surprisingly for Agent Stiglitz, anyway, but Jericho had expected
precisely such a ‘surprise.’

Jericho rolled past the head of the bed just as a hilt
sprang out the end of the bed’s tubular, metal frame which had until that
moment concealed the meter long weapon. It was the same monomolecular blade the
assassin had tried to kill him with at Pemberton’s safe house, and Jericho
barely managed to get his fingers wrapped around it before Stiglitz’s
metal-boned body crashed into the bed and bent its frame as though a small
hover bike had just run into it.

Jericho had barely managed to get free of the man’s
immediate reach and as he did so he spun the sword in a wide, sweeping arc
which went into—and effortlessly through—Stiglitz’s left leg, severing it
entirely.

The look of surprise on Stiglitz’s face was probably more
satisfying to Jericho than anything the other, sadistic man had experienced in
the last hour and a half of torture. Without fanfare, or ceremony of any kind,
Jericho brought the blade around and sliced cleanly through Stiglitz’s nearest
arm a second before it would have made contact with his body, and it flew off
just above the elbow.

Unable to regain his balance in time, Agent Stiglitz
teetered and crashed into the crumpled remains of the lightweight bed and
Jericho quickly sliced his other arm off just below the shoulder.

“I hope you understand,” Jericho said through gritted teeth
as his vision narrowed from the blood loss and physical trauma which threatened
to overpower his senses, “I’m not one for taking chances.”

To Agent Stiglitz’s credit, he lashed out with his lone,
remaining, limb in an attempt to kick Jericho’s leg out. But Jericho had
already moved the monomolecular blade to intercept the man’s leg. He did little
more than hold the weapon in place as Stiglitz literally kicked his own leg off
just below the knee, proving that even his heavily-augmented physiology was no
match for such a cruelly efficient weapon.

Jericho was seized with a coughing spasm for a moment, but
he never took his eyes off the Agent. When he had regained control of his lungs
Jericho stood over the other man and noticed that barely any of the man’s blood
had escaped what remained of his body.

But a cursory glance revealed that Stiglitz’s skeleton was
cybernetic, and much of his musculature was synthetic as well. In fact, the
more Jericho looked at the man, the less like a man he appeared.

“Well played, Adjuster,” Stiglitz congratulated, his face
betraying none of the agony he should have felt. “A suppression field…I never
even considered the possibility that a backwater detention facility like this
would have one.”

“Oh, it didn’t,” Jericho assured him as he looked down and
saw his left arm had begun to bleed more than he would have liked. “I had it
installed just after we sifted through the raw data feeds at Investigator
Masozi’s apartment building the day of Cantwell’s Adjustment.”

Stiglitz shook his head in amazement. “Impressive…most
impressive,” he said with grudging respect. “May I assume that the fair
Investigator is currently carrying out your mission?”

“You can make an ass out of yourself if you want to,”
Jericho growled, fighting against the growing waves of pain in his ruined arm,
“but you’re going to have to leave me out of it.”

“How did you withstand the interrogation,” Agent Stiglitz asked
in a duplicitously pleasant voice, “at least tell me that?”

“Simple conditioning,” Jericho replied as the door to the
cell opened and a hazmat team entered, followed by a small medical team, “it’s
amazing what a human mind can do with enough practice…and faith. But, if I’m
being truthful,” he added grudgingly, “you almost had me.”

“So you
are
a zealot,” Stiglitz said as the hazmat
team ran a series of scans on the disparate pieces of his body.

“Not a zealot,” Jericho replied solemnly, “just a patriot
who still believes in what his nation was supposed to be even after its
politicians have forgotten.”

“Then…as a fellow patriot,” Stiglitz said, actually managing
to prop himself up slightly amid the wrecked bed, “I must say that you’ve
earned my admiration. Pulling me out of my position at Keno’s side to create an
opening for your subordinate…an inspired feint,” he said grudgingly. “It seems
I was not the hunter—you were. And that mistake will now cost me my life.”

“Don’t feel too bad,” Jericho said tightly as one of the medical
technicians began to inject his arm with a series of drugs, “you’re not the
first person to fall victim to your own arrogance…and you won’t be the last.
But you’re right; there’s no way we could have taken both of you in one place.”
He knelt just far enough from Stiglitz’s body that he knew the Agent would be
unable to reach him, and Jericho said smoothly, “See…I learned everything
I
needed to know about
you
back in New Lincoln when you didn’t take a shot
at me while you had the chance. You had nothing to lose by taking that
shot…except the chance to indulge your ego and curiosity.”

“Well said,” Stiglitz said with an approving nod. “So well
said, in fact, that I’m going to give you a gift before you end me.”

“Not sure I’m interested,” Jericho said, drawing the sword
back as he stood. The assembled technicians scattered like leaves in the wind
as he did so with looks of varying trepidation on their faces.

“Oh…I’m sure you are,” Stiglitz said with a confident smirk.

Jericho was tempted to cleave his skull in two and be done
with him, but something in the man’s affect suggested he might actually know
what he was talking about. “Let’s hear it,” he said evenly.

Agent Stiglitz’s smirk spread to a dark, savage grin, “You aren’t
as clever as you think you are, Adjuster. My simulations suggested a three
percent chance of this particular outcome, so we took the necessary
precautions.” He threw his head back and laughed before continuing, “A
contingency has already been put in place; as soon as the Investigator
assassinates Governor Keno, the city of Abaca will die a grizzly, savage
death…and not long after the city dies, this entire colony will become an
uninhabitable wasteland.”

Jericho considered his words and, in a handful of seconds,
came to a conclusion. “Thank you,” he said before lashing out with the
monomolecular blade. He easily severed Stiglitz’s head from his body in a
nearly bloodless decapitation, and he pointedly turned his back on the
likely-still-conscious Agent’s head.

The lead doctor of the team recovered from the shock of
Stiglitz’s death more quickly than the rest of her team and she stepped forward
to say, “We have to get you to a surgical suite.”

Jericho shook his head, “I don’t have time.”

She pointed to the small, cryogenic container one of her
team had just finished placing what was left of Jericho’s arm into. “That
container can hold your tissues indefinitely, but your wounds need cleaning and
dressing.”

Jericho shook his head again, “No, Doctor; I’ve got more
important business. You,” he snapped to the technician who was just about to
close the box, “take that dross out of there.”

“Dross?!” the doctor replied incredulously. “Without that
container your tissues will decay and we won’t be able to re-attach them!”

“Fuck my arm,” Jericho said grimly, gesturing to Stiglitz’s
disembodied head, “put that thing in there. And send one of your techs with
me—I’ve got to get to Abaca before it’s too late.” He dropped the monomolecular
blade and held out a hand expectantly, “My link, please.”

The doctor had a look of impotent fury on her face, but she
took out the link and slapped it into his palm. “You are a stubborn bunch,” she
scowled.

“Nice seeing you, too, Val,” he said dryly, immensely
grateful that the painkillers they had given
him
had
reached therapeutic levels in his bloodstream. He activated the link before
remembering, “Jeff sends his regards, by the way.”

The doctor threw her hands into the air before finally
relenting, “Who am I to argue; if he doesn’t want his arm that’s fine with me.
Set the Agent’s tissues to perfuse on the bypass unit before freezing
his…remains.”

While she coordinated the efforts of her team, Jericho
punched in an access code to the link and was rewarded with the image of Eve’s
busty, sexualized avatar. “Someone
need
a pickup?” she
asked before blowing a large bubble of virtual gum and smacking it loudly
enough to make a nearby technician jump.

“Overdrive the
Tyson
’s engines if you have to,”
Jericho grimaced as pain shot up his left arm and his vision narrowed, “but
come get me and then set a course for Abaca—Masozi’s in trouble and we’ve got
to rescue her.”

“You got it, babe,” she replied smartly. “Charging the
Tyson
’s
drives now; ETA your position is six minutes.”

“Good work, Eve,” he said as he made his way out of the
cell, with one of the kit-carrying medical technicians in tow. “Home in on my
signal…we don’t have much time,” he added as a wave of vertigo came over him
but he fought to keep conscious.

He needed to stay awake at least until he got on board the
Tyson
.
If he didn’t there was a very real possibility that Masozi would die for doing
nothing but her job.

Jericho hadn’t spared her from that fate back in New Lincoln
just to see it play out here on Philippa. Besides, she had done everything he’d
hoped she would so her predicament was more
his
responsibility than her
own.