An Eighty Percent Solution (CorpGov) (36 page)

Tony’s experience and math showed that three shaped charges,
placed
six meters apart
,
would splinter the entire dome
,
creating a hole between
them
large enough to overcome any possible emergency repair
.
Doubling th
e number of charges
provided assurance of destruction
.
The same procedure
at two different sites ensured that if
,
by
some miracle
,
a grouping
was
found
or
the
holes somehow plugged
, the second would be sufficient
.
All timers were set to
detonate
seventy-eight
hours later
.
This gave the divers m
ore than enough time to exit the area and decompress
.

Tolly and Tony repeated their hex placement
75
meters away.

“Site two complete
.
En route to submersible.”

Despite
chattering through his teeth, Tony couldn’t help but smile at another successful mission.

“Watch your depth
.
I don’t want you bending,” Linc offered.

“Go bite your bum
.
I can watch my own depth.
And make sure you have some hot coffee ready
.
I’m freezing.”

* * *
 

“Erecting itself in front of you is the
Nanogate
Spire, a marvel of modern engineering and construction,” claimed a propaganda board in front of the construction site with a pleasant female voice
.
“When completed
,
it will be the tallest
free
-
standing structure on
E
arth
,
at a lofty
1.83
kilometers tall
,
stretching over
200 meters
taller than the
Tovarich Tower of Moscow.
”

“How fitting,” Tony
remarked
, lean
ing
up against the brick façade of the building next to the construction
.
“
Nanogate
, the corp that kicked me out
,
is taking the brunt of our attacks…our first of many victims
.”
With
the GAM’s
change in targeting
,
he didn’t even worry about security or
Metros
.
This site
’s
sole
guard slept most of the time
,
and
its
single
obsolete
surveillance drone scoured the wrong areas three times while leaving the rest of the site open
.

The spire’s framework
curl
ed
up into the air like the gruesome skeleton of a unicorn’s horn
.
The metal shimmered, not in its own light but rather like it crawled with millions of tiny insects
.
N
o pests infested this site
,
but instead trillions of nanites
carried
materials up to the top
,
where they fused them into the
growing
crystalline structure before returning for more
.
The spiral grew in height as
Tony and Sonya
watched.

“The opening of
Portland
’s
Nanogate
Spire is planned for
February fifteenth
,” said the sign
.

Sonya looked at Tony and then wistfully up at the seemingly self-growing building
.
“My grandfather once told me that people used to build skyscrapers by hand
.
Men would actually climb on those metal arms hundreds of
meters
above the ground with no gravity belts or safety harnesses
.
A huge machine would lift massive beams into place
,
and
they’d
heat bits and pieces of metal together so they stayed put
.
Each building often measured its cost in the number of lives lost.”

“Sounds like we shared some similar relatives.”

“Yes,” Sonya sighed
.
“By the way, don’t think of what happened as anything but a
one
-
night stand
.
She isn’t romantically involved.”

“Huh?”
Tony asked, confused by the sudden subject change.

“She was gone w
hen you woke up, right?”

“How
—
”

“Suet’s environment taught her only one way to show gratitude
.
She
’
s protective of us as her family
.
You saved Colin, someone she
’
s come to think of as a brother
.
She showed you the appropriate gratitude
.
She
’
ll come to love you like a brother as well, but don’t equate her sexual outbursts as anything but friendly fornication.”

Tony mulled this over
.
“Thank you, Sonya
.
I honestly didn’t know what to think
.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed myself, but it was so sudden and so unexpected
.”
His eyes
star
ed
off into nothing and his mouth hung slack
.

Sonya gave a soft
,
girlish giggle.
“She has that
e
ffect on many men and women both.”

“Whew
!
I just…”

“You
’
re among good company, Tony
.
Also, you
’
re best off not remarking on it in any way
.
She gets testy if you do, thinking she hasn’t pleased you.”

He nodded.
“So why are we taking this out?”
Tony asked
,
pointing to the spire, trying desperately to change the subject
.
He didn’t like talking sex with others, especially other women
.
It
made him feel somehow dirty
.

“Well, Augustine said that
Nanogate
’
s already behind on construction and every day in delay is costing them hundreds of thousands because of extending leases.”

“So
add
the cost of rebuilding to the cost in delay
s,
and
it’s
going to make them sting.”

“That it will.”

“Actually
,
I’d give a pretty penny to watch the faces of some of my coworkers when this comes down
.
All the stock options los
t
, the bonuses evaporating…”

“The layoffs,” Sonya offered
.

“True, which can work for us even more
.
We should be able to recruit from their losses
.
We
’
ll have to be careful, of course, but maybe
form
a second cell that isn’t tied to ours
.
Only one of us needs to be exposed.”

“Have you ever been a guerilla before
?”
Sonya asked quizzically.

“No, why?”

“I’ve been running this group for years
.
You’ve made more progress in a few weeks than I have in my entire tenure.”

“My grandfather fought in the resistance in the Australian revolution
.
When I was very young
,
he used to tell me stories
.
They were never pretty, but they were romantic
.
I dreamed about his adventures
.
But even more than those
stories, I’ve been
reading from the local library since I’ve been with your group
—
Che Guevara, Mao Tse-tung, and even Girish Taqueur of the Martian revolt
.
While this isn’t directly the same kind of war I’ve been reading about, it has enough similarities that I can pick my way through basic strategies.”

“
Reading
?”

“Yes.
”

“
Unbelievable
.”
Sonya shook her head
.

“Shall we get on with our fun?”

“Yes.”

“After you,
m
a’am
.”
Tony followed Sonya over to the
ceramcrete
walls hiding the underground vats of raw material
.
“Rare or well done?” Tony asked
,
pulling out a plasma cutter
.
He traced his arm in a broad circle just like a fairy godmother waves her wand
.
The
3
meter
circumference he outlined fell out of the wall with only a minor cacophony that no one noticed at ground level
.

“Either of two minor changes should bring this building down
.
First the mixture
.”
Sonya poured the contents of her handbag into one of the two vats
.
“The compounds in this should oxidize this material
,
making the material bond the nanites achieve much weaker
.”

“My turn,” Tony said, waving an electronic probe over a
2
meter section of the microscopic workers
.
“If Augustine
’
s correct we
’
ve reprogrammed these nanites to build sections of the frame with a different crystalline lattice
.
This will make a
2
meter weak point out of every
40
meters
or so
.”

Sonya looked up at the visibly growing spire and smiled.
“
It’s
poetic justice that
we’re
using their technology against them
.
I approve wholeheartedly.”

“I agree
.
I don’t know when
it’ll
come down
,
but
it’ll
be
a
long
time
before completion
.
Even better
will be the
exceedingly spectacular
show it provides
.”

* * *
 

Using
low
-
light contact lenses, Squib crawled along above a false ceiling using a grav-belt
fine
-
tuned to just barely carry his weight
.
Too
many years
had
passed since someone in the
a
rmy
gave him
his
nickname
—
he
couldn’t even
remember
its
origin
.

His employer put a rather attractive price on this clut’s head
.
Track
ing
this target
caused him some problems until he called in a favor from a wirehead. That worthy
individual
offered that he
’d
captured a sideband transfer worming his target’s identity into the
database as
owner of this flat
.
One in a trillion shot
,
but
he’d take all the breaks he could get
.

His client insisted this be a simple vape job with no fuss
.
Squib didn’t care
.
One hole or a thousand holes, they still died
.
One hole saved on ammunition.