An Eighty Percent Solution (CorpGov) (37 page)

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
nobody 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 alarm
s
their bathroom
…

* * *
 

Nothing smelled like a dead body
—a mixture of
iron
, burned pork
,
and shit
, 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
c
ondo
a
ssociation
.

While
un
pleasant, 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 crevasses to penetrate
.

Cin sat at the edge of the mess and looked on with
lady
like
dis
d
ain
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 bastard
who
se
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 assassin.

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 bas
tard
?
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
s
eventy-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 masses 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 negotiati
ng
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 analysis 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 assent 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 massive 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 anticipate over six million just in the last week
.”