An Eighty Percent Solution (CorpGov) (28 page)

Sonya spread her arms and swooped straight down
.
She beat Tony to the ground by about
two
seconds as she pulled up hard at her landing
.
Sonya counted out loud
.
Out from underneath the building they sprinted, once again covered by the cloudburst
.
On the count of thirty the
y
both threw themselves into the muck.

She tongued her mic
.
“Fire in the hole
.”
Tony looked up enough to toggle his detonator
.
A flash preceded two sharp gusts of wind and a gout of expanding flame from a half
-
meter hole
.
Like a three
-
legged table with one
leg
suddenly yanked
away
, the entire mammoth complex began to tilt downward.

“You did it, Tony
.”
Sonya
checked her timer
.
Five minutes remained
.
Not enough time
, she thought,
but they had to try
.
“Assassin teams, execute
.”

The ponderous structure hadn’t even struck
the ground
when an even dozen dark-clad figures, in two loose groups, erupted from the mud and muck
sprinting
toward the falling corner
.

Sirens began to wail and
k
laxons to bellow
.
“Yell and complain all you want, beast
.
You took one in the belly and
you’re
going down,” Tony said as the mass slammed into the ground with enough force to make every one of the assault force bounce almost
5
centimeters off the ground.

Sonya herself rolled during the impact, clogging her nose with mud
.
She spit and snorted as she watched a
10
meter corner of the platform actually snap off
.
This alone caused the closest tower to
break
free of its remaining moorings and continue the fall
.

After she cleared her nostrils of the silt,
she called out,
“Good sim, Augustine
.
Fell within
3
degrees of your prediction
.”
Because of this, both the Assassin teams closed
safely
on either side of its deadly swath.

The platform, now canted at almost fifteen degrees, showed only sporadic areas still with lighting
.
E
lectrical shorts
of blue-white
flared out in random locations
.
Alarms continued to make useless noise
.
Loose material still slid around on the unnatural tilt
.
Sonya could pick up no deliberate movement by any of the internal response teams
.

“Sniper
T
eam, switch to covering fire mode.”

The first of the Assassin
Team
grav jumped up to the top of the first line of wreckage.

“Team lead, we have
Dayton
response team inbound,” Augustine called over the link
.
“
ETA
six minutes
.
Response team is heavy
.
Repeat
—r
esponse team is heavy in
Sierra
,
India
, X-ray minutes.”

“Roger, Overlook.
Assassin teams
,
abort
.
We can’t hold of
f
a heavy weapons squad.
All teams fall back to rendezvous point Bravo
.
Explosives
T
eam will supply retreating cover and extract at Charlie.”

“Overlook en
route
.
Extraction Bravo forty-five
.
Extraction Charlie ninety
.”

“We didn’t get the prize, Tony, but you did well.”

* * *
 

“The Greenies once again perpetrated an outrage in a cowardly attack on a
low
-
level computer training facility just outside the
Ohio
town of
Fairborn
.”
The action committee of the GAM sat huddled around the tiny
solido
projector
.
From the large “LIVE” at the bottom
,
the feed presumably showed the
listing and
broken platform
as it appeared right now
.
It looked different in the daylight
.
Firefighters helped injured people
out of the wreckage
as others shored up the rubble to make sure there were no other accidents
.
A line of ambulances waited off to one side
.
“The outlaw group butchered sixty-three, and wounded seventeen others
.”

“What the fark?”

“Shhh,” several said in unison
.

The picture switched to one man wearing the blue coveralls of a computer
tech
.
His face bore red splatters of blood and wept even more from a bandage covering his left eye
.
“They didn’t even give us a chance
.
First there was this horrific bang and the world tilted
.
Next thing we knew
,
they charged in with flechette rounds flying
.
I saw one of those bastards fire into my buddy Ron after he put up his hands to surrender
.”

“What is he blathering on about?”

“Shhh!”

“If it weren’t for the private security force SecWest,” the announcer continued as the view switched to show the tan and red uniformed gunmen keeping watch over the rescue operations, “the death toll
would’ve
skyrocketed
.”

The screen changed to an overly beautiful reporter questioning one of the SecWest officers, who wore a bandage around his shoulder.
Without prompting, he said,
“We were only able to apprehend two of the suspects and we were forced to kill four more as they open fired on us even when we had them surrounded
.”

“What a load of
—
”

“Shhh!”

“Captured
?
Are they barking mad?”

“Will you shut up, too?”

“…of our force lost their lives
:
Benjamin Anderson, twenty-five
,
and Celia Pauls, thirty
.
There will be a memorial in their honor Sunday at
noon
.
At least their devotion to the sanctity of life and their ultimate sacrifice wasn’t in vain
.”
The view panned briefly to a grav litter, where the sheet pulled back to show what had
once
been a beautiful woman,
now
horrifically mutilated and torn apart across the throat
.
The image flashed back to the officer’s wounded shoulder.

“And what about your injuries
?
”
inquired the reporter.

“Oh, this is nothing but a scratch
.
Not even worth worrying about
.
Honor Ben and Celia.”

Someone in the room let out a Bronx cheer
.

“…is the security spokesman for Wal
Ma
Co, the parent company of the training facility, with a prepared statement
.”

“
‘
This
is another case of patience leading to victory
.
While the Corporate Protection Act of
’24
allows us to try these two villains ourselves, we believe
it’s
in the better interest of the public to remand them to the custody of the neutral agency of the Dayton Metro Police
.
In this way everyone can understand just what monsters these terrorists
are
through
due process of law.’”

“I’ll give him terrorists…”

“Will you shut up!”

“…Director Atwell went on to say that the perpetrators were humanely questioned, revealing significant tactical data that may lead to further arrests.
In other news…” 

The
solidoset
snapped off with a menta
l command from Augustine
’s implants
.

“Well they didn’t cage
or vape any of our people
,
so this cast is make-believe,” Linc said
,
jumping in again
.

“So what
?
We move on. And keep going
.
This doesn’t mean anything to us.”

“No way
.
I go’ peeps insis’ing we’re hur’ing peeps.”

“Who cares,” Andrew said, standing on a crate and waving his hands vehemently
.
“Let them go to hell in their own way.”

“I have to disagree,” Tony said as he gently stroked the recently reunited Cin as she slept in the crook of his left arm
.
“This is concentrated propaganda intended to drive the people away from us; make us into enemies of the people instead of their savior.”

“What makes you so special, corpie?”

“Shut up there, Andrea.”

“Tony, you did a right smashing job on that training center.”

“Yup
,
he sure did
.
He took just long enough for us not to finish them
.
Maybe he had friends inside
,
”
Andrea objected.

“Now, Colin, they have the right to whatever opinions of me they want
,” Tony offered as nonchalantly as possible.

Sonya finally intervened by standing from her
customary
lotus. The room fell silent.
“I’d like to make two things clear
,” she began.
“One: as leader of the explosives team I take responsibility
for
failing that action
.
Tony
worked faster than I thought possible and accomplished more than I’ve ever expected
.
Had it not been for Tony’s quick thinking and expertise with explosives
,
we wouldn’t have even brought the training center down.
”

Sonya turned and walked away
,
passing
almost through the doorway before Linc spoke up
.

“
Wait a minute.
That’s just one
.
Second?”

“I’d work with Tony any time against any odds
.
Any of the rest of you who won’t are idiots.”

* * *
 

The two static bursts Tony heard in
h
is earpiece meant only one thing, “Patrol
.”
Nothing could be worse in the middle of a transition move
.
With no choice he hung
by
one arm from a
ceramcrete
cornice
one hundred meters high
on the outer façade of the
NikInc
Building
while cursing to himself
.
No longer strapped to his chest
,
the
2
kilo explosive charge dangled from his left hand
.

“I tell you, that girl from the
Beaverton
mailroom is shooting eyes at you,” came a voice below him.
“
I say go for it!
”

Tony
couldn’t move for
fear of
drawing attention to himself
,
pattern
-
mimic
king clothing
notwithstanding
.
H
is mission brief
told him
the guards
carried gauss guns capable of
flaying
the entire building face to dust with millions of steel slivers
.
That
thought
alone gave
him a healthy
dose of
respect
.