Ure Infectus (Imperium Cicernus Book 4)
Read Ure Infectus (Imperium Cicernus Book 4) Online
Authors: Caleb Wachter
Infectus
by
Caleb Wachter
Caleb Wachter
All rights reserved.
All characters and
events in this book are fictitious. All resemblance to persons living or dead
is coincidental. Respect my electronic rights because the money you save today
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Imperium Cicernus Shared Universe
On
The Imperium’s Secret Service
, by Christopher G. Nuttall
Death
to the Imperium
, by James McGovern
Rebels
and Patriots
, by A.G. Claymore
Ure Infectus, by Caleb Wachter
Caleb Wachter
As of 08-29-2014
SPINEWARD SECTORS:
MIDDLETON’S PRIDE
SPHEREWORLD NOVEL
SERIES
SPHEREWORLD NOVELLAS
SEEDS OF HUMANITY:
THE COBALT HERESY SERIES
COLLABORATIVE
WORKS BY LUKE SKY WACHTER & CALEB WACHTER
SPINEWARD SECTORS
NOVELLAS
Admiral's
Lady: Eyes of Ice, Heart of Fire
Admiral's
Lady: Ashes for Ashes, Blood for Blood
Books by my Brother: Luke Sky Wachter
SPINEWARD SECTORS
NOVEL SERIES
RISE OF THE WITCH
GUARD NOVEL SERIES
RISE OF THE WITCH
GUARD NOVELLAS
Follow me at my
Facebook Author Page
Join
www.PacificCrestPublishing.com
for beta reading opportunities and more!
Chapter II: Protocol vs. Politics
Chapter V: One more makes Two-for-Two
Chapter VI: The Guardian Angel
Chapter VIII: A Pit Stop—and Don’t Forget
the Pasta!
Chapter IX: Three-for-Three…and Takeout
Chapter XI: One Solution Deserves Another
Chapter XV: Plan ‘B’…as in ‘Brutal’
Chapter XVII: The Host with
The
Most
Chapter XVIII: A Blast from The Past
Chapter XIX: Time and Pressure
Chapter XX: The Sleeping Dragon’s First
Breath
Chapter XXIII: A Confrontation
Chapter XXIV: Taking Stock and Committing
Chapter XXV: Disappointment vs. Endurance
Chapter XXVI: Stick it in and Twist it
Chapter XXVII: Operation: You Lose
Chapter XXVIII: The Blurred Line between
Victory and Defeat
Sneak Peek of Guarding an Angel, a novella in the Chimera
Adjustment story
Preview Chapter I: On Feathered Wings
Preview Chapter II: The Heart of an Angel
I: Fear the Voters
“I fear I’ll be working late, darling,” Mayor Cantwell said
in a conciliatory tone through his earpiece’s attached microphone. He had never
actually intended to make it home for dinner that night, but a rather
surprising visit had interrupted his other plans for the evening and had
therefore provided the perfect cover story for his pre-planned extracurricular
activities. “Give my love to the children…I love you too. Bye-bye,” he tapped
the earpiece to sever the communication with his wife, before turning his
attention back to the Professional Hammerball League representative sitting
across from him.
“I trust you find everything in order, Mr. Mayor?” the
representative pressed. He was a tall, muscular man around fifty years of age.
Judging from his apparently unmodified physique, Mayor Cantwell deduced that he
was a former professional athlete—probably a hammerball player from the same
league which he now represented.
The Mayor looked over the short, plain document and he
suppressed the urge to nod. The Professional Hammerball League Commissioner had
struck a behind-closed-doors deal with Mayor Cantwell some years earlier, and
that deal had seen New Lincoln—Mayor Cantwell’s city—play host to the Anvil.
The Anvil was the largest sporting event on their entire world, and though
hammerball had surprisingly failed to catch on with the nearby systems, it was
ludicrously popular with the locals on Virgin Prime—collectively referred to as
‘Virgin’ by most of its inhabitants.
When New Lincoln had served as host city to the Anvil and
all of its attendant fanfare, the city had been promised massive economic
benefits in exchange for major renovations and public works projects which were
to be undertaken at taxpayer expense. Of course, there had been certain
setbacks and the event had become a PR black eye for the Mayor’s administration.
“Forgive me, Mr…” Mayor Cantwell pressed for the third time
since the meeting’s unscheduled outset.
“Bennett,” the man replied in his crude, low-born accent.
“Of course…Mr. Bennett,” Mayor Cantwell nodded knowingly as
he surreptitiously activated a data retrieval program to search for information
about the man sitting before him. “And you fill
an
…”
his lips twitched sardonically, “advisory role for Commissioner Heinlein?”
“That’s right,” the man with the square, chiseled jaw
replied as his grey-blue eyes bored into the Mayor’s own. “I’ve served in my
current capacity for thirty years, and I can’t imagine doing anything else.”
The data retrieval program activated a retinal display
device, and Mayor Cantwell began to flick through the several gigabytes of data
the program had retrieved on the man sitting before him. It seemed that he had,
indeed, been a standout player for the Hampton Hoarkers prior to suffering an
early, career-ending spinal injury.
According to the laws of Virgin, such an injury—while easily
treatable with modern medicine—precluded a player from continuing to
professionally compete in athletics since such an injury’s repair would involve
measures that had been deemed to be performance-enhancing.
The Mayor scrolled through the first few pages of relevant
data, with extra scrutiny placed on Mr. Bennett’s affiliation with the League
Commissioner. Apparently he had served in an ‘advisory capacity’—which, in
political terms, generally indicated that he acted as a ‘bag man’—for nearly
two continuous decades. His other records were more or less nonexistent,
including no traffic violations, domestic disturbances, or anything else aside
from a handful of off-world visits to the nearby colonies which coincided with
the Commissioner’s own travel schedule. In short, he presented a completely
typical profile for the very person he claimed to be—which put the Mayor on his
guard.
“Mr. Bennett,” Mayor Cantwell leaned forward and laced his
fingers together as he deactivated the retinal display with little more than a
twitch of his cheek, “I must admit that I was surprised—and more than a little
disquieted—by this unscheduled meeting.”
Bennett fixed his gaze on the Mayor, and Mayor Cantwell—a
lifelong politician who had debated some of the most powerful people in the
entire system—actually felt the urge to recoil from the weight of the man’s
gaze. Instead, he did as he always did in such circumstances and affixed a
patently false, well-practiced smile on his lips. “Mayor Cantwell, the
Commissioner has expressed…concern regarding recent allegations directed your
way relating to the New Lincoln Anvil which took place two years ago. The
League can’t exactly afford another Watercress incident—especially not so
soon.”
Cantwell’s smile tightened, knowing a veiled threat when he
heard it. “I can assure the Commissioner that these concerns stem from little
more than off-cycle news fodder; I’m currently running a seventy three percent
approval rating with over two thirds of my constituents having expressed a
desire for my re-election to a fourth term. Tell Commissioner Heinlein that
this will all blow over in a matter of days.” Cantwell’s smile broadened as he
decided to make a play of his own, “But I’m afraid
these
numbers are
inaccurate.”
Bennett cocked an eyebrow. “Oh?” he asked, his expression
somewhere between surprise and wariness.
Cantwell nodded solemnly as he highlighted one passage of
the coded letter—a passage which, using predetermined verbiage, confirmed the
amount of bribe money he had accepted in order to secure the public works
committee’s support. That committee had been the most instrumental component of
bringing the Anvil to New Lincoln, and Mayor Cantwell had distributed the
Commissioner’s bribe monies to several key members of that department…well,
Mayor Cantwell hadn’t given
all
of the bribe monies to the committee.
“Indeed; I fear we miscalculated the secondary impact on our
fair city’s waste disposal systems,” he explained as he tapped out a new set of
numbers in an addendum to the document. “I have discussed it with the committee
at some length and they assure me that this figure must be increased
accordingly.”
He slid the data pad across the desk to Mr. Bennett, who
accepted the pad as his jaw clenched tightly. His eyes flicked down to the
figures Mayor Cantwell had added and Mr. Bennett’s eyebrows rose briefly before
grudgingly nodding his head, “Commissioner Heinlein has authorized me to accept
these figures on his behalf.”
Cantwell’s eyebrow cocked in a mixture of amusement and
incredulity. “It would seem the Commissioner trusts you a great deal…I find it
strange that we have not met until just now.”
Bennett seemed to ignore the prodding comment as he produced
a small, familiar data link from his pocket and activated it. The former player
input a series of commands to the uplink before speaking a series of coded
phrases into it. It was all quite regular procedure and this set the Mayor at
ease, since Mr. Bennett was using the exact same uplink his predecessors had
used to initiate clandestine payments to a series of dummy accounts Mayor
Cantwell had established throughout the sector.
Cantwell re-activated his retinal display and, with little
more than a few twitches of his cheek and the rhythmic clacking of his teeth,
logged into his secret banking portfolio and verified that the agreed-upon sum
of money had indeed been transferred to his handful of secret accounts, and
that the money had originated from the same accounts the Commissioner had used
in the past.
The Mayor’s smile broadened as he reached for a DNA-locked
compartment of his desk, and after opening the compartment he produced a pair
of glasses and some of the rarest liquor known to the entire Sector. “I believe
the conclusion of such a productive business relationship calls for
celebration,” he declared as he used his implanted uplink to cycle down the
auto-turrets which had been on a hair trigger activation sequence since Mr.
Bennett had entered the office.
The thought had occurred to him to simply execute the man using
those defensive systems, but had he done so he would have certainly been
detained by public security forces. Such a detainment would have caused him to
miss his appointment with a set of sisters—quadruplets, at that—who were
waiting to…indulge his appetites on the other side of town.
“I’m not much for the sauce,” Mr. Bennett said with a
disapproving look, and Mayor Cantwell shrugged as he slid one of the glasses
back into its compartment. The League representative reached into his jacket’s
pocket and withdrew what looked to be a cheap—possibly hand-made—cigar and
gestured as though requesting permission.
Mayor Cantwell nodded as he suppressed a sigh, knowing that
inhaling smoke was perhaps the least efficient method of delivering the desired
chemicals into the body. “To each his own,” he said as he put three fingers of
the expensive liquor into the tumbler before replacing the stopper on the
bottle.
Mr. Bennett produced a small, petroleum-fueled lighter from
another pocket and lit the cigar before taking a long, deep draw from it as the
Mayor took the first sip of his drink. It burned his throat almost badly enough
that he wanted to gasp, but he knew that like all things of great value in
life, he needed to savor that measure of pain just as much as the pleasure
which would soon follow.
“I’m afraid I’ve got a confession to make, Mayor Cantwell,”
Mr. Bennett said after a polite silence had hung between them for several
seconds.
Cantwell leaned back in his leather chair and swirled his
drink absently, wanting nothing more than for the man to leave his office as
quickly as humanly possible so he could skip over to the quadruplets’ flat and
engage in his latest, sordid indulgences. “And what confession might that be,
Mr. Bennett?”
Bennett took a second, long draw from the cigar before
deliberately stamping it out against the arm of the posh, leather chair in
which he sat. The smell of aerosolized leather preservative wafted into Mayor
Cantwell’s nostrils, and his eyes narrowed at such a blatant sign of disrespect.
Commissioner Heinlein will be hearing of this
, he promised himself
silently.
When he had ground the last of the cigar’s embers into the
leather cushion, Bennett stood to his full, imposing height. Without breaking
eye contact he cracked his neck first to the left, then to the right, before
saying in a calm, conversational tone, “I’ve never cared for politicians.”
In a blur of motion almost too fast to see, the man who had
defiled the antique, leather chair with his cigar produced a cleverly-concealed
pistol…
…and blew the top half of the sitting Mayor’s head off just
as the lights went out.
The Mayor’s body began to twitch spasmodically in the faint
light, and the gunman’s arm ached from the vicious kick his crude weapon had
produced. “Wlad,” the gunman posing as a PHL rep said after inserting his
earpiece and opening a channel to his equivalent of tech support, “glad to see
you got those sentry cannons under control. I need an update.” He let his eyes
adjust to the darkness as he checked a small, concealed, carbon-fiber clasp
which was attached to a harness hidden beneath his overcoat.
“You got it, ‘Mr. Bennett’,” the other man said
sarcastically in his ridiculous, long-practiced accent. “You got six—no, eight
private security dudes outside the door. I done sealed it tight, but that’ll
only buy you forty seconds if these guys be packin’ what they supposed to be
packin’.”
“Cut the shit, Benton,” he snapped, irritated at his
operator’s chosen vernacular. The Mayor’s office had been rigged with all
manner of scanning hardware, so there had been no way to get his standard gear
for a job of this type into the room with him. Exiting the room was therefore
going to be tricky—and hearing his operator’s archeo-slang wasn’t helping him
focus.
“Thirty seconds, Jericho,” Benton said through the earpiece,
his voice taking on a slightly more serious tone as he briefly abandoned his
adopted vernacular, “looks like the window’s your way out.”
“Thanks for that update, operator,” Jericho quipped dryly as
he flipped the emblem of his office onto the Mayor’s desk. The hexagonal
insignia landed in the middle of the desk near the Mayor’s body, adding an
intentionally dramatic flair to the macabre scene.
Jericho took a second cigar out of his pocket and carefully
unwound the wrapper. Inside was the standard assortment of dried leaves and
seeds which made up the low-cost alternative to chemstix and other, less
destructive, methods of stimulant introduction. But buried within the cigar was
a pair of small, brownish, metallic beads. He plucked these out of the mass of
dried leaves with his surgeon-steady hands and made his way to the window.
“Twenty seconds, Jericho,” Benton reported altogether
unnecessarily. Jericho suspected the big guy just liked to hear his own voice,
and since the two of them had a history—not to mention that Benton was easily
the best operator he had ever worked with—Jericho had grudgingly learned to
deal with the other man’s peculiar idiom.
Jericho carefully placed the two beads a precise distance
apart on the glass at about chest height before producing a carbon-fiber clasp
from beneath his trench coat and attaching it to a nearby vertical support
beam. He then took four measured steps back and turned to face the window.
Jericho knew that for the beads to work their technological magic, the shot
needed to be taken from a precise location. His concealed weapon only had two
rounds, and he had used one of those to execute his Adjustment of the
Mayor—whose body had only then stopped twitching.
He took careful aim between the two beads, knowing that if
he even missed his shot by a few inches that the bullet would be deflected by
the super-strong, floor-to-ceiling window of the Mayor’s lavish office. Closing
one eye—to improve his focus as much as his vision—he took a slow, cleansing
breath and squeezed the trigger of his relatively primitive slug-thrower.