An Eighty Percent Solution (CorpGov) (29 page)

“Chrissy would castrate me
,
”
the other guard complained.

“She’s been leading you on for months now
.
She’ll never sign a cohab contract.”

“Why not?”

“Didn’t I tell you what she told
Cher
?”

Tony’s right arm began to throb
.
Shotgun
bursts of air batted against him like a kitten at a ball of fluff at the end of a string
.
He
listened intently as the pair slowly moved around the perimeter of the
football-field
-
sized landing platform
.

“Yeah, yeah
.
That don’t mean nothin’
.”

“I tell ya
, i
t ain’t gonna happen
.
You got a smoke
?”

“Sure, but don’t let O’Donnel
l
catch you
.
You already have two reprimands
.
One more and you could get sacked
.”

“O’Donnel
l
doesn’t worry me
.
I got the dirt on him
.
He can make all the noise he wants but he can’t get rough with me
.”

Tony could feel every crenellation of the cement digging into his skin
.
Fatigue rolled through his arm as his body rocked back and forth in the wind
.
Gritting his teeth gave limited relief
.

“I can’t believe that little dance with Candy has made her that gun-shy.”

“I think it had something to do with the fact that you were both dancing
on
your clothes instead
of
in
them
.”

Tony couldn’t wait any longer
.
He passed back the emergency signal, four quick bursts with his tongue to the mic in
the
roof of his mouth
.

He expected nothing more than Colin to run for his life while Tony tried something equally stupid to escape before
betraying
his presence
.
Instead
,
Colin walked out onto the platform in plain view
.
 

“But it isn’t like we we
’
re doing
—H
ey
!
Who
the hell
are you
?”

Tony didn’t hesitate at
this break
, quickly sliding
the plastique
s
back to their carrier
.
Almost in the same motion
,
he slapped his nanite
-
coated climbing gloves and shoes
against
the wall
.
As designed
,
the nanites penetrated into impurities and por
e
s in any surface they touched
,
giving him nearly perfect grip
.

“
Soy perdido
,” came Colin’s perfect Spanish
.

“Buddy, I don’t care if
you’re
lost or not
.
You stop right now or
we’ll
cut you in half
,
”
the
first guard demanded
, training their guns smartly on the intruder
.
 

“¡
Arrepentido
!” 

“
You’ll be sorry
, all right
.
Kneel and put your hands behind your head
.”

“
Si
.”
A few grunts
on the platform
later
,
Tony risked a look back to see one of the security guards using a
low
-
tech fiber-graphite binder on Colin’s wrists as he lay face down on the ground
. T
he second guard stood professionally
,
4
meters
away
,
with his weapon trained
on the prisoner
.
Another binder went tightly around each
of Colin’s
leg
s,
with one loosely between the pair
.
The best
he
could hope for was a night of crude physical torture
,
and Tony couldn’t imagine the worst
.

“Up on your feet.”

“
Si,
jeffe
.”

“Walk straight through that door
.”

Colin complied, never once attempting to resist.
Tony watched
in amazement
as they walked directly beneath him
and disappeared from sight
.
Nothing in his life
had
prepared him for someone willing to sacrifice for someone else
.
Nothing
.
Every fiber in his body screamed for him to plant the bomb and run
.
He hesitated, unable to move, his mind adjusting to something completely new
.

His tongue flicked the mic on his right molar
.
“Augustine, I need you to break the security
on
the electrical hatch to my right
.
I need it in the next forty seconds
.”

“Not asking for much, are you?” the old woman chided from over
forty kilometers
away
.

“Are you going to work or are we going to jaw
?”

“Door alarm disabled,” she offered almost immediately over his earpiece
.
“Paralysis gas and electroshock ice disabled
.”

Sweat rolled off Tony’s brow because at
Nanogate
they
wired two manual deterrent systems
above those
attached
to the computer systems
—
a
little
tidbit he learned
during
his brief stint in the Physical Security
D
ivision.

Opening the door,
Tony crawled into an oval orifice, barely larger than a sleeping
capsule
, pushing aside bundles of wires and
fluid
tu
bes
.
His eyes and mind focused on
looking for traps
.
T
he temperature dropped as he belly-walked in
.
Again
,
his career broadening assignment paid off
.
Cooling the tube improved infrared sensor capability, but infrared sensors generated more false alarms than all other parts of a security system
combined
.

As Tony’s breath clouded the air, he spotted the sensor, right where
he’d seen similar devices
at
Nanogate
.
Balancing on his elbows
,
he snapped off three silent shots from his automatic at the sensor
three
meters away before a tiny arc of electricity announced its demise
.
Holstering his weapon
,
he
chose
to assume
security
would be similar
to what he remembered
.
In that case
,
the only boundary yet to deal with
would be
a
nanite stream
, a simple group of mindless microscopic robots
continuously sampling for
foreign
DNA
.
Invisible
,
but not invincible
.

Tony unhooked his Kevlar canteen and began running a thin bead of water on the floor
.
As he crept slowly forward he watched the water
.
T
he stream suddenly took a left turn
as if
a
knife-
thick wind blew it
.
Looking at his watch, Tony sloshed a larger amount of water, pushing the stream forward, breaking it briefly
.
Three minutes and four seconds later
,
the stream again interrupted itself for just a moment
,
letting him know the
exact
cycle time
.
Definitely not invincible, he thought.

He poured the entire canteen empty, breaking the stream significantly
.
Tony also blew on the water, scattering it
even
further
.
Precisely
183
seconds later
,
he scrambled forward as fast as he could
.
If his legs still lay in the stream
,
it would only be acknowledged when
security of one type or another
tied his
own
wrists with graphite bands
.
Just ahead another access hatch opened down onto an empty hall.

The
5
meter ceiling height caused an indecorous landing
,
but with no damage except to his pride
.
“I’m in,” he sub-vocalized
.
“Do you know where
they’re
holding him?”

“I’ve isolated a single room that has no net access, no room monitors
, no halon fire suppression
and no fire alarm
.
I’m assuming that’s it
.
Fifty meters and turn left
.
Third door on the left
.”

The sterile white hallway
demanded
speed
,
not stealth
,
for his special clothing would be of no help here
.
Tony sprint
ed
down the hall
.

“Yup
,
”
he agreed.
Spitting out only a few syllables at a time
,
he managed, “Can’t imagine anything except a closet would be designed that way.”

“It isn’t a closet
.
Those are clearly marked on the plans
.
This is called a
‘
utility room.
’
”

“Keep an eye on the alarms
.”

“As if I wouldn’t
.
You pay attention to your job, son
.
I j
ust disabled the tangle field you were about to run through
.”

Tony didn’t have any more breath for chitchat
, or to even choke out a thank-you
.
His breath came in hot, ragged gasps
.

“What is your plan, anyway?”

As an answer Tony
put the muzzle of his assault weapon against the lock and
fired just
as he slammed the door with his
full body weight
.
The door
exploded inward
.
Colin struggled,
chained to a chair
.
T
wo
guards wore
surprised faces
.

During
his brief
training
,
Tony’s marksmanship
had
improved from abysmal to merely awful
.
His first t
hree shots stitched almost at random across the room
,
one creasing Colin
’s
hip and the last flattening against the chest armor of one guard, staggering him backward
where he fell
flat onto the floor
.
Colin screamed
,
falling
backward in the chair, lowering his profile
.

Tony
’s momentum, barely slowed by the door, carried him
right over the chest of the downed guard
.
Tony’s boots
elicited
crackling noises as he trod over the man’s head
.
In a classic mistake, Tony fanned his automatic like a death beam
,
spinning up and to the left
with the recoil of the old-fashioned weapon
.
None of the bullets even came close to his target
.
The remaining
guard
, responding quicker than most would to the mayhem, drew his gauss gun and fired a burst
,
but he m
isjudg
ed
Tony’s headlong speed
.
Instead of ripping Tony’s head off, the guard’s shot tore
a gaping hole in the wall behind
his target’s
maniacal charge
.
The guard’s second burst
chewed
a dinner
plate
-
sized hole in the plaster
ahead of Tony
as
he
slammed into the wall with a
loud grunt of pain.