An Eighty Percent Solution (CorpGov) (27 page)

“I think
it’s
because they were always within a meter and I never had to aim,” Tony said sheepishly
.
At least none of the other GAM members witnessed his lackluster marksmanship
.
“Just get my finger in the general direction and it blew a hole large enough to never have to worry about aiming.”

“Holy…” Tony watched Jonah’s freckled face go nearly as red as his hair
.
“I thought
you’d
be proficient with the gauss
.
I’ve had raw recruits that never held a gun before do better than that
.”

“Sorry, but I wasn’t even good with first
-
person shoot
er
hologames.”

The redness in Jonah’s face actually increased to a
dark
maroon
.
Jonah opened his mouth to say something but closed it unsaid
.
In fact
,
he didn’t say a word
,
but wandered around in circles ignoring Tony for the better part of five minutes
.

“
OK
.
We don’t have time to train you from scratch here
.”
He checked his watch
.
“The blue bellies could be here as quickly as ten more minutes
.
We’ll have to put you in the simulator for the basics
.
And we don’t have the time for even much of that before the op.

“Just for the record, what
are
you good at?”

* * *
 

Lightning backlit the floating fortress like a photo negative
.
Sonya realized they
’d
picked an exceptional night for their work
.
Rain poured down from the
Ohio
sky like some angry water god revisiting a flood upon the earth
.
The torrents of October rain, barely above freezing itself, scoured through the
light
dusting of snow
,
making the earth dark
.
Floating
10
meters above the ground,
the fortress
protected a
60
meter triangle of white
crystals
from the deluge.

Another bright flash in the sky preceded four almost simultaneous crashes that sounded at least a little like nearby thunder, if one wasn’t aware of their more sinister origin
.

Sonya activated her wrist countdown timer
,
marking the best case response from Dayton Metro
.

“Sniper Team reports guard towers neutralized
.
Explosives
T
eam, you’re up,” came
Colin
’s crisp, businesslike voice over the sub-dermal links
.
“Assassin
T
eam, prepare
.”

Sonya motioned to Tony to take the lead
.
She wouldn’t let him out of her sight on his first joint mission
.
She knew his mind and heart were in the right place, but she couldn’t read his abilities the same way
.
Some things relied on the old fashioned
methods—
observation and analysis.

Sonya eschewed the multi-spectral night mission contact
lenses
the rest of the team wore
. A
few
simple
mnemonics
,
and her vision nearly equaled theirs without the technology
.
She watched as he moved well against the dark, wet ground, even at a dead run
.
She couldn’t tell if he consciously moved around the noisiest of the puddles or whether it came naturally
.
Even in
a pounding run,
Tony’s
breath barely
showed
,
even
to the enhanced
.
H
is feet never slipped underneath him, even in places Sonya fo
und herself taking tiny skids
.
Through the
downpour
’s sound, which
swallowed up their noise and that of any passing herd of buffalo
,
Sonya watched Tony’s skills and up-ticked his value
.

Sonya followed as Tony dodged to the left of a runoff waterfall twice the width of a bus
and
into the shadow of the building
.
In spite of being a hardened guerilla, Sonya sighed in relief from the
continuous sheet of rain
.

Sonya watched as Tony
put a little bit of separation between them, leaving more of their muddy brown footprints in the white façade covering the earth
.
With
30
meters between them
,
Tony slapped at the grav belt activation switch and missed
.
Sonya read the curse that fell from his lips
.
He didn’t miss the second time
,
but overcompensated and leapt much too fast into the sky
.
Before she could radio anything, he modified his ascent to something more reasonable
.

Sonya chanted a mnemonic to herself as she traced a single tattoo line down over each shoulder beneath her poncho
.
Spreading her arms she indulged in a spiral lift-off
.
For a brief uncharacteristic moment her mission awareness faded
.
Wind tickled her long
lashes and caressed her cheeks
.
She never lost her joy for flight
.
She spent nearly a week in the air when her mentor finally beat this skill into her thick skull
.
She then spent nearly a month recovering
.

As Sonya caught up to Tony’s height
,
her mind reengaged with the deadly mission
.
They both approached the underside of the floating citadel on either side of the faint golden aura that marked the boundary of two large grav fields impinging on one another
and the
characteristic ozone smell of the grav drive
.
S
he pulled explosives from beneath her poncho
as she
fought
the
urge to rub away the tickle in her nose.

Sonya could just make out Tony’s form pressed up against the roof on the other side of the distortion
.
Immediately
,
she realized that Murphy had bollixed up their mission
.
Instead of ballistic steel reinforced ceramcrete, a mesh of interlaced monofilament held the entire fortress like a giant net
.
Their explosives couldn’t possibly penetrate the monofilament that distributed everything done to it over its entire length.

Sonya tongued for her mic to abort the mission when Tony crawled upside-down
in her direction
, waving at her
.
She paused long enough for him to get close.

“Don’t abort
.
I can still bring this down
.”

“How long do you need?”

“Ten to twenty minutes.”

“Too long
.
The blue suits could be here in twenty-three
.”

“Then I’d better make it in ten
.
Let me get to work
.”

Sonya just gave him an odd look
.
She realized moments later that no one in her team had ever brushed her aside so completely before
.

Tonguing her mic she said, “Mission hold
.
Hold positions
.”
She watched as Tony, with the proper handling gloves, took three small filaments of the same material as the mesh from his pack and tied them each in a bow, one right atop the other
.
He then placed a very small bit of explosive on each of the exposed ends and loops
.

“Monofilaments distribute all forms of energy at a remarkable speed throughout its entire length and width
,” he explained. “
I have to create a surge through each of these extra filaments that hits the same point at the same time
.
If
I’m
successful
,
there’ll be
too much energy for it to dissipate quickly enough.

“I’ve done it twice before, but never without calculations and computer control
,
” he said, attaching the last of his bits of explosive.
“
Move back about
3
meters
.”

Backing up himself about a meter, Tony flattened against the building and triggered a remote
.
A small crack and flash about the same magnitude as a pistol shot resulted
.
As she crawled up with Tony,
Sonya
saw
he’d severed
the junction of two of the monofilaments, their ends straining downward
.
Between the severed ends stood a
1
centimeter
-
deep hole in the ceramcrete
.

Sonya couldn’t say she saw exactly what happened until Tony described it later one step at a time because now his hands were a blur as he spoke. “We don’t have time to rupture the entire net
,
”
he explained,
whipp
ing
out his own primed explosives and
pulling
them apart, a task Sonya
would’ve
done only with the greatest of care
.
Tony
seemingly cared only about speed
.

“So
we’re
going to have to destroy the grav generator in place
,”
Tony concluded
.
He tore open the nearly sealed end
of the explosive
, throwing the lid away into the dark
before ripping
the entire assembly out of the case
.
He squeezed the detonator out of its gelatin capsule
, and
the capsule from the plastique itself
.
Packing the box again with the moldable explosive
,
he hollowed out one corner
.

Sonya started to object
,
because more was always better
,
but
he interrupted her.

“Here, hold this
.”
He
held
out the excess explosive putty, wiping it into her open hands
.
Then he
stuck the completed device
into the gap in the
monofilament
web, keeping
the open face against the bottom of the citadel with the hollow corner just touching the tiny divot.

“Give me your explosives
.”
While juggling, upside down, the putty in her hand,
Sonya
handed the two
25 centimeter
cubes over to him.

“I’m building a quartet of shaped charges I hope will be powerful enough to blow directly through to the generator and turn it to slag.”

Sonya watched his hands fly through a repetition of the same motions
.
Each time the
clump
of explosives in Sonya’s hand grew larger and each time he stuck the completed box with the hollowed
corner
at the tiny dimple until, with the final one in place, he ended up with a two
-
by
-
two grid of boxes
. If they had been one unit the boxes would have a hollow cone-shaped depression in the center.
 

“Give me back that extra
plastique
.
Now for the hard part
.”
Tony broke the explosive into four blobs, rolling them into rough spheres
.
Each one he jammed onto the four farthest corners from one another on the underside of the boxes
.

“I hope this works,” Tony said
.
“Time to make like a drum
and beat it
.”