An Eighty Percent Solution (CorpGov) (30 page)

One of
Tony’s second
burst
s
, wobbly and hurried from his impact, remarkably caught the
second guard
in the lower thigh between the armor plates and the knee
.
A second scream reverberated
through
the room as the
he
went down
.
A third
cry
followed as Colin rolled his chair over on the guard’s injure
d leg
.
Tony placed the red laser pointer dot
on the man’s forehead and squeezed off the final projectiles of the battle
.

Breathing hard, Tony checked the man
he’d stumbled over, finding
a boot
-
sized impression rapidly pooling with blood in the corpse’s head
.

“You
all
right, Colin?”

“Good enough to get out of here
.
Find the cutters
.”

With a certain amount of distaste, Tony
scavenged
through
the
deceased guards
’ pockets
before finding a pair of wire cutters
.

“You have
three
alarms going off,” came Augustine’s voice
.
“
V
ital function monitors
from
each of
the guards,
and environmental alarms on the nanite stream.”

“
We’re already
on our way out.”

“Don’t tarry
.
You have less than a minute to clear the building before they lock it down
,
and you have less than thirty-four seconds before guards erupt all around you.”

“Not a problem.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice.”

“By the way, what’s the third alarm,” Tony
asked
as he ran
.

“Explosives detectors
.
You still have the package.”

It wasn’t conscious thought that grabbed the explosives from his chest, flicked the timer down to as short as it would go and stuck it in the first doorframe he
ran
past
.

Tony
thought
Colin
, even injured,
probably set a new unassisted record for speed
—
less than fifteen seconds
later
the pair
sprinted off the landing platform in a
300
meter base jump
.
 

“Yeehaw!” Colin yelled over the abyss
.
Behind them a bass roar and gout of flame announced their mission accomplished, if in an unorthodox way
.

Their chutes opened barely high enough over the ground to allow them a rough but survivable landing
.
Other than the quizzical looks of three
nearby
Nils
,
nobody noticed or cared
.
Tony and Colin
cut off their chutes and
quickly
dove down a manhole
.
T
he remainder of the escape
proved
only silent professionalism.

* * *
 

A
fter two weeks of walking nearly everywhere
,
Tony missed the comfort of the TriMet
.
Suet led
him
off the TriMet at
Vancouver
Tower
.
While no
civilians
moved away from the green warrioress, none actively crowded her either
.
Her body modification demanded respect
.

“Where are we going, now?” Tony asked for about the third time
.

“You run your mouth more than anyone I know,” Suet said in mocking tones about an octave above comfortable.

“Talking is one of life’s great
—
” 

A
jade
-
colored tentacle placed itself gently over his lips
.
“P’ease be quie’
.”

Tony contained himself for the better part of the two elevator rides down from the platform by leering at his companion
.
Unlike the majority of men, Tony never carried a bias against girls who went for permanent body modification, not matter how far it went
.
Only the
end result mattered
.
Suet’s form curved in and out at just the right places and the right amount
.
He didn’t care that it had been sculpted rather than grown
.
Her
green emerald
shape
undulated and swayed just like real living flesh
.
Who cared that a diamond bit couldn’t drill through it
?
The tentacles in place of arms cooled
his ardor
just a bit
,
but not enough to matter.

Getting off at the thirtieth floor, Suet’s broad hips and natural rhythm forced Tony’s eyes into a pendulum motion as she
sashayed along
in front of him
.
Tony nearly walked into her as she stopped abruptly at a door marked 30117
.
“We’re here
,
”
she announced without fanfare.

“We are
?
Where is here?”

“Home,” Suet said, using an electronic keycard to
gain admittance
.

Realizing his sudden lack of attention to anything but his female companion, Tony looked around and did a mental double-take
.
By
United States
codes, the t
hirtieth through fortieth floors were reserved for commercial
and
retail enterprises
.
Across the narrow hall from him
,
a door announced “Hentai Carpet Cleaning
,
” and the one adjacent to that
read
“Falcon Pewter Service.”

He shuffled through the door into a
n
open warehouse
brightly lit by hanging fluorescent
illumination
.
The lighting didn’t do the room justice
.
Only the darkness of a morgue would help
this place
.

The space rose fully two stories high, filthy with dust, mis-sprayed paint, and bare
ceramcrete
floors bearing the mark of untold equipment dragged and dropped
repeatedly
.
The only walls that
marred the boxy space
belonged to a
tiny bathroom in the far corner
.

“Whose home
?”
His voice echoed in the
mostly
empty space.

“Yours
.”

Tony couldn’t help seeing the cherry on the top of a pile of dung
—
a nicely appointed
full
-
sized bed occupied the corner near the bathroom
,
leaving twenty meters of emptiness between
.
He had been bunking in a comfortable bed in his old cell in one of their quiet underground safe houses
.
He didn’t see this as a step up
.

“You are kidding, right?”

“No
.
We make some green for you to re’ecora’e,” Suet said, closing the door
behind her
.
She ambled over toward the bathroom and peered in
.
Tony didn’t need to enter the bathroom to know
there’d
be decade-long stains ground into all of the fixtures.

“Does the cast of
Makeover Thunder
come with it?”

“No, but I’m sure others give assis’ance if you ask
.”
She plopped down on the bed
.
Tony heard the springs squeak even from the entry
.
His back gave a sympathy twinge at the thought
.
“We have a warehouse with sofas and other junk
.
You can pick and choose and we bring them here
.”

Gawking his head in all directions
,
Tony shambled in
.
“Are you sure my fairy godmother isn’t a part of this deal?”

Suet ignored
the impertinent
question
.
“
OK
.
I have more for you
.
’
ime for you to become someone e’se.”

“New identity?” he responded absently
.
“Maybe if I put in a false ceiling below the lighting,
do some
paint
ing
,
toss in
a few lamps and put up a few walls
,
I could make this place look a bit less institutional
.”

“Your new nom of guerre is An’onio Kars’
.
Having same firs’ name makes it har’er to mess up.”

“Not a bad idea,” Tony said, still gawking about and visualizing changes.

“Here
’s
your chip, papers to this p’ace, and some convincing papers of your his’ory; break up papers, union receip’s, passing away papers for your mother, gym membership
,
and even a no cloth
e
s solido of your non-gir
’
friend
.
The usua’
.

“Augus’ and her peeps scrub’ the memory p
’
aces an’ threw this junk back in
.
She’s thorough
.
No worry abou’ using them
.”

Tony came over to the bed and sat down next to the mass of paper and plastic that suddenly redefined his life.
“No
,
I don’t imagine that I do
.”
Suddenly he felt kinship to the echoing emptiness of the home the GAM gifted him with
—
everything emptied and ready for a new owner
.
He just needed to make it a home.

Suet grabbed him with one tentacle and pushed him to his back on the bed
.
Her lips locked with his almost at the same moment
as he hit
.
Her other tentacle tore open the crotch to his pants.

“What?” he sputtered.

“Park your mouth
.
Jus’ enjoy,” she whispered into his ear as one of her appendages found its way around
his genitals
.

Remarkable, one part of his brain thought, it feels soft and silky, not rough like sandpaper
.

“You think with
all
this biowear tha’ I no
fee’ your sex
?”

“But…”

“Hush up for once, will you?”

Tony hushed.

* * *
 

Nanogate
nibbled on a Stilton cheese puff, dreamily considering how the GAM action, once successfully completed, might boost his own standing in this council
.
No longer the new man, his voice would carry weight
.

“
Taste Dynamics
is recognized
,
”
said the chairman
.

“
I’d
like to make this council aware of an action I unilaterally started which may, possibly, have some
e
ffect
on our efforts against the GAM
.”

Startled,
Nanogate
raised his head
slowly so as not to show his inner turmoil
.

“Please go on
.
You have the floor.”

“Before our agreement to action, I put together a team of experts to investigate guerilla tactics and strategies to see if we could find a method to mitigate the GAM
.
Unfortunately, or fortunately
as the case may be
, I put a very sharp operator in charge of
this project
.
I honestly forgot about the think-tank until I received notice of an intentional reduction in our firewall from the inside
.
Oddly
,
it pointed only at data that, upon quick correlation, was false
.