An Eighty Percent Solution Part 15

"You're among good company, Tony. Also, you're best off not remarking on it in any way. She gets testy if you do, thinking she hasn't pleased you."

He nodded. "So why are we taking this out?" Tony asked, pointing to the spire, trying desperately to change the subject. He didn't like talking s.e.x with others, especially other women. It made him feel somehow dirty.

"Well, Augustine said that Nanogate's already behind on construction and every day in delay is costing them hundreds of thousands because of extending leases."

"So add the cost of rebuilding to the cost in delays, and it's going to make them sting."

"That it will."

"Actually, I'd give a pretty penny to watch the faces of some of my coworkers when this comes down. All the stock options lost, the bonuses evaporating..."

"The layoffs," Sonya offered.

"True, which can work for us even more. We should be able to recruit from their losses. We'll have to be careful, of course, but maybe form a second cell that isn't tied to ours. Only one of us needs to be exposed."

"Have you ever been a guerilla before?" Sonya asked quizzically.

"No, why?"

"I've been running this group for years. You've made more progress in a few weeks than I have in my entire tenure."

"My grandfather fought in the resistance in the Australian revolution. When I was very young, he used to tell me stories. They were never pretty, but they were romantic. I dreamed about his adventures. But even more than those stories, I've been reading from the local library since I've been with your group-Che Guevara, Mao Tse-tung, and even Girish Taqueur of the Martian revolt. While this isn't directly the same kind of war I've been reading about, it has enough similarities that I can pick my way through basic strategies."

"Reading?"

"Yes."

"Unbelievable." Sonya shook her head.

"Shall we get on with our fun?"

"Yes."

"After you, ma'am." Tony followed Sonya over to the ceramcrete walls hiding the underground vats of raw material. "Rare or well done?" Tony asked, pulling out a plasma cutter. He traced his arm in a broad circle just like a fairy G.o.dmother waves her wand. The 3 meter circ.u.mference he outlined fell out of the wall with only a minor cacophony that no one noticed at ground level.

"Either of two minor changes should bring this building down. First the mixture." Sonya poured the contents of her handbag into one of the two vats. "The compounds in this should oxidize this material, making the material bond the nanites achieve much weaker."

"My turn," Tony said, waving an electronic probe over a 2 meter section of the microscopic workers. "If Augustine's correct we've reprogrammed these nanites to build sections of the frame with a different crystalline lattice. This will make a 2 meter weak point out of every 40 meters or so."

Sonya looked up at the visibly growing spire and smiled. "It's poetic justice that we're using their technology against them. I approve wholeheartedly."

"I agree. I don't know when it'll come down, but it'll be a long time before completion. Even better will be the exceedingly spectacular show it provides."

Using low-light contact lenses, Squib crawled along above a false ceiling using a grav-belt fine-tuned to just barely carry his weight. Too many years had pa.s.sed since someone in the army gave him his nickname-he couldn't even remember its origin.

His employer put a rather attractive price on this clut's head. Tracking this target caused him some problems until he called in a favor from a wirehead. That worthy individual offered that he'd captured a sideband transfer worming his target's ident.i.ty into the database as owner of this flat. One in a trillion shot, but he'd take all the breaks he could get.

His client insisted this be a simple vape job with no fuss. Squib didn't care. One hole or a thousand holes, they still died. One hole saved on ammunition.

Simple sonic probes had provided the layout two days earlier. An easy commission-nipping in through the ventilation system posed no problem for someone of his diminutive size. He planned to drop in silently through the bathroom, the one room in any flat that n.o.body ever thought to guard. He lifted one of the faux ceiling tiles and looked down. A mottled orange animal sat on the toilet lid looking up at him. It let out a small sound, barely loud enough to even be heard.

Squib reached for his gun to silence the creature when he felt a burning in his chest. He crashed through the false ceiling to fall heavily to the floor, knocking what little breath he still had out of him. He couldn't seem to inflate his lungs. Looking down, he realized he no longer had a chest, only a hole where most of it had been. He looked up and saw his target, standing nude above him with his finger smoking. Squib could only think, as he died, No one alarms their bathroom...

Nothing smelled like a dead body-a mixture of iron, burned pork, and s.h.i.t, in this particular case. Tony also couldn't believe the vast mere of blood. Vids never got any of the three correct. Mostly the smell creators for vids really didn't want to make their audience vomit. Twice Tony offered the contents of his stomach to the handy toilet. For the six hundredth time he missed the Body Removal of his former condo a.s.sociation.

While unpleasant, disposing of the corpse proved the easiest part of the job. A molecular blade cut through the joints very easily. In just thirteen relatively easy pieces he had all but the torso safely within the calorie reclamation bin. The torso took a bit of extra effort, and mess, but eventually it too, in several uneven chunks, followed the rest to be ground into protein paste. This just left Tony with five liters of red to decontaminate.

For whatever reason people just didn't understand how much blood pumped through a person's body. He scooped it up, sponged it up, mopped it up. He felt like the little Dutch boy of myth holding back the sea with a fork. The gradually congealing goo stuck to everything like honey and found the most devilish creva.s.ses to penetrate.

Cin sat at the edge of the mess and looked on with ladylike disdain for anything as plebian as cleaning. Tony couldn't be angry at her. She was a cat, after all, and without her unusual warning-a rather wet, raspy tongue to his nose in the dead of night-it might be his blood staining the floor right now.

Tony didn't have any feelings for the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d whose body he just dismembered, but the intruder's presence did cause him some concern in other ways. He didn't know who sent the criminal, but his tools weren't those of an ordinary robber, but rather a professional a.s.sa.s.sin.

Sitting up from his all fours position, Tony looked over the mottled pink floors. Before this was over he knew he'd be very happy for all the leftover bleach from his apartment's initial cleaning.

Who hired the b.a.s.t.a.r.d? Were the corps or Metros behind this attack? All questions for another time. Cin yawned. Tony fell back onto all fours to continue scrubbing like an ancient scullery maid. Someone should write a book: The Glamorous Life of an International Terrorist.

Implement-Phase Five "When we agreed to this course of action, we knew there'd be a short-term increase in damage for a long-term payoff," said one of the nine eight-centimeter solidos on the stark obsidian desk. He didn't know the technology on how these conference calls were secured any more than he thought about tying his shoes. The corps bought security like one would buy a bag of potato chips, and with about as much thought to the purchase.

"That's all fine for you to say. None of your profits have been attacked. Nanogate, one of the crown jewels in our portfolio, is down seventy-eight percent and falling."

"It was your plan, Nanogate," Taste Dynamics said scornfully.

"Probably revenge-motivated," one of the other solidos stated. "The profile we shared shows a twenty-two percent chance of such retaliation."

"Nothing showed anything in such scale, however," offered another.

"The Nanogate Spire represented billions in lost opportunity cost, lost revenue in retained leasing, and redesign costs."

"Redesign?"

"Our polling shows we can't pin this one on the Greenies. They haven't publicly claimed responsibility. The ma.s.ses think this was a design flaw causing an industrial accident, despite our media blitz to the contrary. They won't accept the same design. We have to start all over."

"Seems excessive. What about retaining your current headquarters?"

"We're already negotiating that point. We aren't in a strong bargaining position, though, and the owner knows it. He's holding us hostage with a ruinous penalty and will require us to purchase the current building at a twice or thrice inflated cost.

"But as costly as this is, it's a pittance compared to the other impacts they've been making. We've been able to keep the manufacturing plant disasters-all five of them-quiet with some well-placed bribes. The Loihi dome, however, caught the media's attention because of an ill-timed visit by some maintenance personnel. But the real point is that the cost to repair and replace will likely to be more than all of our combined companies' profits for this year. Worse, we may have a shortfall of product."

"Insurance?"

"How many of you buy insurance of this scale? We're self-insured as a shared risk across our entire corporate umbrella. Even if we did carry such a policy it'd bankrupt the company underwriting the policy."

"Any other damage?"

"Any other damage?! Of course there is, if that isn't enough. Nothing of that scale, however. Call it pricey vandalism: rewiring the powering station of our delivery vehicles so the batteries burned up; multiple costly supercomputer crashes despite all the ice we could surround them with; rerouting sewage lines into the fire-suppression system of one of our primary engineering facilities and then setting a small fire. There are more of the same, but they're swallowed in the larger problems."

"Total costs?"

"Our current estimate is one hundred forty point three trillion, give or take fifteen percent. Note that this doesn't cover the public opinion cost nor the stock impacts."

Even the normally nonplussed group fidgeted at the sum before one finally broke the tableau. "Stay the course. It isn't as if we hadn't expected costs. The computer a.n.a.lysis still shows this is by far the best course and it more than pays back in the long run."

One by one the other solidos agreed. He nodded in a.s.sent only because they expected it.

"One other item of note," ECM stated. "As we expected, the subject has changed his name, and databases have been modified to show the change. I'm sending details by separate carrier. This is the first confirmation that shows the subject is truly part of the GAM."

"Thank you for that clarification. Anything further?"

"I have one item," noted OldsTransport. "We discovered unusual market activity on all of Nanogate's holdings. Specifically, there were ma.s.sive puts against the stock just before significant pieces of sabotage."

"Were we able to track the people doing the trading?"

"No. It was all done over the counter, in convenience stores and networked brokers in small amounts. Nothing traceable. Not only that, but innocents are getting involved in the frenzy as well."

"Does this really change anything?"

"No, except that they're now no longer poorly funded. We antic.i.p.ate over six million just in the last week."

"I do ask that until this item is resolved, we meet weekly."

"Agreed."

"Yes, by all means."

The meeting ended as the communications links broke, one by one, terminating the images like soap bubbles landing in the summer gra.s.s.

Nanogate sat quietly for ten long minutes, ignoring the insistent flashing of his door and the neural rasps of his percomm.

"Jonah, Frances, and Colin, you don't happen to have your Metro uniforms still, do you?" Tony said, leaning back and picking his teeth after a group potluck.

"Frak, no. I left that life behind," Jonah said with the relaxed att.i.tude of someone long away from such a painful memory.

"We still have our ballistics," Frances said for herself and her domestic and action partner. "They lojacked all of the bio-enhancement suits, so those had to go, of course."

The rest of the group stopped talking to listen in. Tony had become their number one planner, and if another epiphany struck him, they knew it meant a worthwhile mission.

"Yes, that's all I mean. So if we did some minor alterations, you could pose, at least for a short while, as if you were Metros."

"Yeah, but anyone doing a routine scan would find our badges deactivated, and our heads on the wanted list."

Tony ran his fingers through the thick brush of hair on his chest as he stared off in the distance. "And how do we make people careless?" he asked absently.

"Kill 'em quick?" Several people chuckled.

"Bore them silly. Let Andrew talk to them for an hour. They'd all fall asleep." Andrew pushed Jonah off the couch with a playful shove to the arm.

"Yeah, thanks for noticing me," Tolly offered, mimicking an infamous donkey's droll tones.

"Show them what they want to see?" Sonya offered seriously.

"Exactly. The great part of this plan is that in-depth scouting isn't necessary. This is a swashbuckling job. So here's what I'm thinking..."

"C'mon, you green b.i.t.c.h," the Metro said, pushing Suet's form ahead of him into the light of the security gate of Nanogate Storage Facility Sixteen.

"Stop!" called the security guard, drawing his sonic club, his hands already pressing the local panic b.u.t.ton.

"We are stopped, you rent-a-cop," the second Metro said, his own pulse pistol in the green woman's back. "We found this number playing fast and loose with your fence about thirteen hundred meters down the way. She had this toy on her as well," the Metro said, tossing the man a small block of explosives.

The Nanogate security guard jumped, but realized, belatedly and a little sheepishly, that the device was little more than a featureless clay-like block without a fuse or detonator.

The facility's four other guards pelted up almost simultaneously from different directions, wheezing as they ran to respond to the panic b.u.t.ton. With Greenies going after Nanogate facilities, they all looked tense, but they relaxed at the sight of the Metro uniforms.

"What the f.u.c.k?" their leader demanded between labored gasps.

"They found this one trying to cut through the fence," the first explained, poking at Suet, who just looked angry.

"OK, so what? Why don't you tote this b.i.t.c.h away?"

"Do you have the slightest idea how much paperwork is involved in an arrest?" the taller male Metro offered. "Look, I thought you might be willing to take this punta off our hands for the reward bucks. Make you look good. h.e.l.l, we even put a binder on her arm implants."

"Yeah," the shorter female Metro said. "This way me and my partner don't have to spend the rest of the night doing computer entry and booking."

"You could turn her in yourself. Why the free money?"

"You idiot! Metros can't get reward money. You a Nil or something? When did you get your private security license? Yesterday?"

"Oh, yeah. Sorry. OK. We got us a detention cell in here. Come this way. Mike, stay here."

"Y'all see the game last night?" Frances asked as they entered the building.

Suet waited patiently until they were beyond the gate's monitors and inside the structure. Excreting a lubricant from her pores, one tentacle slipped out of the wrist binder like it didn't exist. One of her arms wrapped around the neck of one security guard, lifting. The spine snapped instantly. Another arm swept the ground, catching one other guard unawares, taking his legs from beneath him. The first arm now did double-duty, lashing bloodily across the chest of the third guard with speed enough to crush a trough in his ribcage. Colin's and Frances's hand weapons, from their Metro facade, finished the standing cripple and the other stunned man.

"Jesus, Suet! Give us a chance for some fun, too."

"I nuke fas'. No s'ow up for you."

"Whatever. Let's plant these charges quickly."

Five minutes later they all gathered back together. "Can I do the honors?" Frances asked.