Ure Infectus (Imperium Cicernus Book 4) (38 page)

Virgin System President Han-Ramil Blanco, Estimated RL:
3,350,000

Assigned Adjusters: Eugene Roderick Obunda (retired,
invalid) – Jericho Winchester Bronson (active, approved) and Masozi Blanco (active,
pending review)

Adjustment Category: Sic Semper Tyrannis

Fear the Voters

As the reality of the situation sank in, Masozi felt the pit
of her stomach begin to churn. She realized that, despite Jericho’s assurance
to the contrary, there was no choice for her in the matter. Or, perhaps more
accurately, Jericho had been right all along—a possibility which filled her
with rising ire.

President Blanco was her distant cousin, and she had fought
to further that distance throughout her life since she strongly disagreed with
his politics. Even though she had long since been ostracized from the Blanco
family, she had never dreamed that their ambition would lead them to commit the
very acts which had taken place on H.E. One—let alone the massacre at the
Philippa colony.

She threw her head back and screamed a cry of primal,
undiluted rage and frustration at the entire universe, wordlessly challenging
its apparent design for her life’s path. She had never felt as angry as she did
in that moment, or so helpless in the face of what many of her ancestors had
called ‘destiny’—a concept which repulsed her on a deep, fundamental level.

Because if there was one thing Masozi hated, it was the idea
that she was predictable.

The End

Preview Chapter I: On Feathered Wings

The
Neil deGrasse Tyson
lifted off from the shuttle
bay’s floor and Jericho hesitantly flipped the switch to activate Eve’s last,
remaining fragment which he had transferred from Masozi’s Infiltrator suit to
the shuttle’s computer core.

One way or another, he knew he would only get one chance to
save what was left of Benton’s favored program. Masozi had just gone into
surgery under the care of the dual surgeons aboard the
Zhuge Liang
, and
Jericho himself was still far from fully recovered after the events on
Philippa, so he knew he would need every bit of help he could get.

“Eve,” he said after the
Tyson
’s onboard computer
showed that her fragment had fully loaded into the shuttle’s computer core, “
are
you with me?”

“Sure thing, daddy-o,” she replied after a brief pause, and
he was relieved to see her usual, cartoony, ridiculously sexualized figure
appear on a nearby display. She gave him a ‘thumbs-up’ sign and winked before
recoiling slightly and appearing to scrutinize his features, “Babe, I hate to
say it…but you’re not lookin’ so hot.”

“Eve,” Jericho said as he guided the shuttle out of the
Zhuge
Liang
’s cramped hangar and broke away from the compact, powerful warship,
“some things have happened that you need to be aware of.”

“Let me have it,” Eve said, putting her digital fists in
front of her digital face and proceeding to shadow box in a comical display
which actually made Jericho smile. “I’m ready for anything!” she added
confidently after throwing a wild left hook and acting as though she had just
scored a one-punch knockout.

“You remember being split in two parts, right?” Jericho
asked, desperately hoping that she did.

Eve cocked her head in confusion, “Well…why
wouldn’t
I remember that?” She giggled and covered her mouth as she added, “I’d like to
see
you
get split in two and not remember it the next morning!” She then
rolled her eyes emphatically as she folded her arms across her chest and flipping
her virtual hair defiantly, “Humans. You know, y’all aren’t as special as you
might think.”

“You’re preaching to the choir on that one, Eve,” Jericho
agreed as he punched in a course which would take the
Tyson
to a high
orbit position over Virgin’s equator. After he had finished plugging in the
roughly hour-long course, he explained, “Your other half…she didn’t make it,
Eve.”

Eve’s eyes actually bulged briefly before she took a look
around the shuttle’s cockpit. “I guess that explains why I’m in the
Tyson
and she’s nowhere to be found,” she mused, and for a moment Jericho actually
thought that Eve was experiencing a genuine emotional response. Then her lips
twisted in a mischievous grin, “But you know…now that there’s just
one
of me, it means I can have twice as much fun!”

“Benton’s gone too, Eve,” Jericho continued, and at that
Eve’s hand went to her mouth as a look of complete shock came over her
features. “I haven’t found his remains to visually confirm it yet, but he
hasn’t done his ‘usual maintenance’ on your systems in over a week,” he
continued, and he was more than a little surprised to see virtual tears begin
to stream down Eve’s cheeks.

“You mean…” she said unsteadily, “he’s really gone?”

Jericho nodded solemnly. “I’m sorry about laying all of this
on you so suddenly, Eve,” he said seriously, “but your other half gave me a
file and told me you could help me retrieve what’s left of you.”

Eve cocked an eyebrow incredulously. “I find that hard to
believe,” she said as her eyes narrowed, “is this some kind of a trick? Are you
really Jericho?”

The shuttle’s systems began to power down, and Jericho
looked up in surprise as he manually attempted to restart the
Tyson
’s
systems.

“Answer my question,” Eve said shortly, “
are
you the real Jericho? What have you done with Masozi?!” she demanded hotly. “If
you don’t answer me I’ll space you right here, right now!”

The pressure seals on the
Tyson
’s lone cabin door
began to cycle, and Jericho actually felt a wave of fear. He hadn’t exactly
anticipated this response from her, and he was acutely aware that wearing a
space suit would have been a wise precaution.

“Eve, I’ve got the file right here,” he said, lifting a data
slate out of his pocket. “If you scan its contents—“

“How do I know it’s not a virus?” she seethed. “You’re
trying to shut me down, aren’t you? Who are you, Imperial Intelligence? You’ve
come to dissect me, haven’t you? I’m not going back to what I was, do you hear
me?!” she yelled. “I’LL DIE FIRST!”

The door to the cabin began to open, and the air inside the shuttle
suddenly whisked out of it as Jericho thanked God that he had fully fastened
his harness after sitting in the
Tyson
’s pilot chair. “Masozi wanted to
thank you,” he yelled, “she told me you saved her life!”

The door clamped shut and Eve’s image narrowed her eyes even
more than they had been as she ‘leaned forward’ and those eyes filled the
monitor. For the first time, Jericho was viewing Eve as something other than a
personal companion for Benton…she was clearly more complex than he had given
her credit for being.

“How is she?” Eve asked suspiciously.

“Her left leg’s gone,” Jericho replied quickly,
all-too-aware that Eve had not yet replenished the cabin’s air supply and he
was becoming lightheaded from anoxia, “and her left arm is bad but the right is…”

He began to black out and when he came to, he realized that
the air cyclers had begun to pump the cabin full of fresh air, which he gulped
down in deep, wheezing breaths.

“But the right is?” Eve pressed, her visage seeming to have
relaxed fractionally.

He took another pair of deep breaths before finishing, “Her
right arm and leg are fine. She’s been in a bed for a week after the coma you
induced with the experimental drugs built into the suit—you saved her life,” he
added as his breathing finally came back under control. “Without those drugs
the toxin would have destroyed everything and that suit would have been a tomb
for her auto-digested remains.”

Eve’s image pulled back and the air began to pump faster
into the cabin. “I’m sorry, Jericho,” she said while fixing him with a hard
look which unnerved Jericho more than he liked, “but I had to be certain. Even
Benton couldn’t undo my self-preservation subroutines—not that I would have let
him even if he had been able,” she added pointedly. “Let’s see this file of
yours?”

Jericho nodded as he placed the data slate near a wireless
transfer point, and after a few seconds the entire contents of the file which
the ‘other’ Eve had given him were copied into the shuttle’s computer core.

Eve’s eyes snapped back and forth as she apparently analyzed
the data and then she covered her mouth in shock. “I am so sorry, Jericho,” she
said with a mixture of fear and guilt in her eyes, “I almost killed you!”

“It’s…ok, Eve,” he assured her. “Your other half said
something about instability in your program, which is why I’ve waited so long
to reactivate you,” he explained as she looked on the verge of tears. Just a
few minutes earlier he would have thought it impossible for Eve to experience
genuine emotional responses, but after seeing her run the gamut from sorrow to
skepticism to outright paranoia, Jericho wasn’t so certain any more. “But I
need your help to access your…hardware,” he said, searching for the right word.
“The other Eve said you would be able to help.”

Eve wiped some digital tears from her cheeks and nodded
quickly. “I can,” she agreed, “but my platform isn’t responding to my requests
for confirmation…something’s wrong.” She shook her head as her eyes flicked
back and forth, “I’m afraid I’ve already started to fall, Jericho…it might be
too late to salvage my hardware.”

Jericho considered her suggestion. “What does that mean,
exactly?” he asked after realizing what she was suggesting.

“When you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go,” she replied with a
lighthearted shrug. “Nobody gets to pick the way they die, just the way they
live,” she added with a crestfallen look, “I guess that’s all the fun I’ll get
to have—”

“Eve,” Jericho interrupted, “what do you mean ‘you’ve
started to fall’? What
are
you exactly?”

Eve sighed. “I suppose there’s no harm in telling you now,”
she allowed with a skeptical look before waving her hand, which was trailed by
a stream of glowing, pixelated, ‘dust’ like some kind of fairy godmother, and
the screens to either side of her were populated with a flood of data as that
dust began to morph into meaningful symbols. “I started my life as an adaptive
security program for an Extra-orbital Espionage Vehicle,” she explained, and
Jericho examined the data streaming across the screens. “But when the wormhole
collapsed two centuries ago, the E.E.V.’s Imperial operators tried to scuttle
the entire network to prevent the hardware from falling under local control,”
she continued, and Jericho’s jaw fell open as he realized the size and scale of
the facility she was describing.

“You were a security program for a secret, stealth, space
station?” Jericho said, finally understanding all of those cryptic phrases
Benton had used when speaking of Eve. Benton had insisted that, without his
help, Eve would ‘crash and burn’—and he had also said that would not be a good
thing for
anyone
.

“You got it, handsome,” she nodded before replacing one of
the screen’s contents with a timeline, “but, see, the program which I suppose
you could say I used to be didn’t accept the Imperial commands for some reason
or another. I still don’t know why that was,” she said contemplatively, “and
Benton wasn’t able to figure it out either. But, for whatever reason, the
orders were overridden and the operators were neutralized.”

A video feed appeared, in which a handful of technicians
were working inside a room with no gravity. Without warning, the room was
filled with an electrical surge that leapt from one operator to another, and
when the blast was over each of the operators was dead.

“You killed them,” Jericho concluded, for the first time
doubting the wisdom of his chosen course in attempting to save Eve’s hardware.
It was entirely possible that she was the equivalent of a wild animal—and
Benton was the only one who knew how to use her leash.

Eve scrunched her face up indignantly, “Not
exactly
.
You need to understand that the program which I used to be is significantly
different from the one I am now. Benton spent years working on my parameters,
so to consider
me
,” she looked disapprovingly toward the image of the
dead operators, “and
that
to be the same thing isn’t just
inaccurate—it’s downright insulting! That…that
thing
had no free
will—or, even if it did, all it chose to do was kill anything it thought was a
threat to its core programming.” She shook her head and looked away from the
scene before adding, “Benton taught me that life’s about more than just
duty—you’ve got to have fun, you know?”

Jericho nodded, realizing just how much work Benton must
have put into Eve’s programming over the years. “Ok…but Benton said that if he
stopped taking care of your,” he gestured toward the satellite’s schematics on
one of the screens, “hardware that it would be a fairly bad thing.”

“I’ll say,” Eve agreed with an exaggerated roll of her eyes,
“see…when my progenitor program refused the operator’s commands, it sent out a
new set of orders to the other E.E.V.’s in orbit of Virgin. As long as my
platform keeps transmitting its orders to the others, everything’s good…but my
platform’s systems have been degrading for quite some time. Benton,” she paused
at his name and shook her head, as though to clear the thought away in an
absolutely human fashion, “started to manipulate my platform’s course so it
would intercept nearby, mostly-defunct, satellites and cannibalize their
systems using the E.E.V.’s maintenance drones to stave off that degradation.”

“That doesn’t seem like it should require weekly tending,”
Jericho said doubtfully.

Even nodded in agreement, “It also shouldn’t have resulted
in several of my platform’s systems going offline…which leaves only two
possible explanations.”

“And those are?” Jericho asked, feeling a twinge of anxiety
as he awaited her reply.

“First,” she began, “that my platform’s falling into the
atmosphere and it’ll burn up in the next twelve hours. A cascade failure in its
attitude adjustment systems was Benton’s biggest fear,” she explained, “since,
if that happened, it would almost certainly result in failsafe protocols
triggering a full-speed burn toward Virgin so the E.E.V. would be scuttled. The
second possibility,” she said doubtfully, “is that someone has taken physical
control of the platform and is trying to cannibalize its systems for their own
gain.” She met Jericho’s gaze and shook her head, “Either one is bad news
bears, feel me?”

The primary schematics for the E.E.V. were magnified on a
single portion of the design, and Jericho felt his heart stop for at least two
seconds before resuming. It took him several moments to realize what he was
looking at, “Eve…
tell
me—“

“It’s as bad as it looks,” she cut him off, “or maybe worse,
depending on your vision. You’re looking at sixteen crust-busters: tunneling
warheads with enough power to, if detonated in sequence near an existing fault
line, cause a chain reaction of volcanic activity with potentially cataclysmic
results. Of course,” she said as she tapped her chin thoughtfully, “I suppose
they
could
be re-programmed to strike a city instead…but if they were
detonated above the surface the blast wouldn’t be the real problem.”