Ure Infectus (Imperium Cicernus Book 4) (36 page)

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. But 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 started out as a nerve toxin and then somehow turned her own
body’s systems against itself and she literally began to auto-digest. Her left femur was more or less 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 just 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 fully soaked through
with blood.

“I guess you’re right,” Jericho said with a hint of surprise
at himself. 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, “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’s
head.

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

“The reattachment 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 the man aboard.

“Among other things,” the other man agreed. “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 pieces, “do you think you know
where all the pieces go?”

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

“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—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 in 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 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 appeared 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 was 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 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 he forced a doubtful
tremor into 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.”

Obunda cocked an eyebrow and then scrunched his features up
in disgust. “What a waste,” he sighed as he tapped a few keys on the data link,
causing a quartet of autocannons to pop out of concealment, “I guess this is
goodbye.”

“Shouldn’t you check that Mark one last time?” Jericho said
as he ran a silent countdown in his head. “I think you might have missed
something.”

“Truly?”
Obunda replied with open
amusement as he withdrew the data slate.

Jericho nodded as the countdown reached five seconds
remaining, “Check the name at the top of the notarial seals.”

Obunda’s eyes narrowed as he reconnected the devices briefly,
and his eyes went wide just before every light in New Lincoln went dark in
unison.

Jericho charged across the rooftop toward Obunda, who had
drawn a high-end, pocket-sized plasma pistol from concealment and snapped the
trigger down with a look of calm, measured control as he did so.

But the weapon never fired, and Jericho slammed his shoulder
into the smaller, thinner man’s chest as a look of horror came over Obunda’s
features. Jericho’s impact broke several of the other man’s ribs—much to
Jericho’s relief, since he had calculated a non-zero chance that Obunda would
be augmented like Agent Stiglitz had been—and he drove the smaller man into one
of the large, concrete-and-iron vent vestibules.

Several more bones crunched when Obunda’s slender back met
the concrete, and Jericho wasted no time in hooking his left arm—an arm which
still had no thumb on its hand—around the other man’s neck before unloading
savage uppercut, after savage uppercut, into the man’s face with his good,
right arm. Obunda’s glasses were smashed into pieces after the third blow, but
Jericho continued until the other man’s face was a ruined mess and he could no
longer stand.

Jericho let Obunda’s body fall to the concrete rooftop and
promptly smashed the man’s small, delicate, perpetually-sweaty hands under the
metal-shod soles of his boots until they, too, had become a ruination of flesh,
bone, and blood.

Obunda attempted to scream, but all that came out was a wet
gurgle as Jericho knelt beside him and leaned down close enough that the other
man could hear him say, “You young people and your fucking gadgets. One little
EMP and what good are they—or you?”

One by one, the lights of New Lincoln began to turn back on
as Jericho picked up the pocket-sized plasma pistol and tucked it into his overcoat.

Jericho had precisely defined the EMP so that it would
completely overload everything in a one block radius more or less permanently.
It was a large risk to take since it would affect so many bystanders, but at
this stage in the operation the stakes had risen too high to back down over a
few people losing power for the ensuing weeks.

“Jericho,” Obunda gurgled in a gurgling, barely recognizable
voice, “you can’t…”

“Can’t what?” Jericho asked grimly.

“You…can’t win,” Obunda said through gasping breaths. “You
don’t…know what…you’re up against.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Jericho retorted evenly.
“Unlike you, I know exactly who I’m supposed to be fighting, and I won’t be
negotiated off my course. Now where is it?”

“Jeric-,” Obunda coughed violently, and a pair of teeth fell
out of his mouth as he did. “You can’t do it…the consequences…”

Jericho shook his head piteously as the other man failed to
complete his thought before his head lolled to the side and he appeared to lose
consciousness.