An Eighty Percent Solution (CorpGov) (6 page)

Lindsay smiled obsequiously as she not
-
so
-
secretly fondled Tony’s
ass
.

“Who isn’t looking to move
?
Up
,
that is
.”

Tony worked hard to ignore the grop
ing
as he and Raymond, a rather pleasant man in his forties, chatted meaninglessly
.
They
found a common ground with
their
mutual enjoyment of the Aussie Spiders, but stood oppos
ed o
n politics
.
After
ten minutes
,
Tony felt he
might’ve
made an important contact for his career advancement
,
but
at the cost of
develop
ing
permanent bruising on his gluteus maximus
—
and probably his glut
e
us sinister as well
.
In payment
,
he whispered indecencies in Lindsay’s ear for the next hour
,
promising a repeat of their
dirty weekend
of Easter last
.

Once free of his shepherd
ess
’s clutches
,
Tony breathed a heavy sigh of relief
.
He knew that politeness insisted he remain for at least another hour, soaking up even more of the artificial atmosphere
created
by the players in this production
—
identical in all but dress
and locale
to hundreds
of others
he’d attended throughout his career
.

He wandered around the room, listening to
snatches of
conversations and occasionally nodding his head to another colleague as he let the ice cubes dilute his drink
.
He avoided further entangling conversations with others by pointing across the room
as though
expected
by
another knot of people
.
Instead
,
he made his way to the
ersatz
balcony
.
Projections from the rooftop
,
the right mixture of air circulation
,
and
carefully concocted
scenting made
him
feel
as though
he
actually
looked out over the massive borough of
Portland
.
Tony breathed in
deeply,
as if
the air didn’t hang heavy with narcostick smoke.

“Nice
,
isn’t it,” said an unidentified male sitting in a chair across the patio.

“Should be
,
for what Chris and Michael paid f
or it
,
”
Tony answered, turning to regard the speaker with an air of indifference
.

The other man smiled affably.
The black suit he wore
contrasted with a
massive codpiece, but the
high
-
necked gauze blouse with a
ruffle
of black lace around the top
gave a hint
.
His lipstick rivaled the color of Tony’s suit and the earrings
glittered
brightly
.
T
iny solido vignettes
within the jewelry
proclaimed his proclivities
.

“Yes
.
I actually thought of getting one myself until Chris told me what he paid.”

“I couldn’t…”
Tony felt a slight tremor in the floor
interrupting his train of thought
.
Moments later a flash turned his attentions to the
“
outside
.”
A rising fireball, the size of a grapefruit at this distance, illuminated a gaping hole in the top of a building several
kilometers
distant
.
“What was that?”

“Oh, my,” the ambi said, holding his manicured hands up to his mouth
.
A
bass
roar
cut through the din
,
stopping all conversations
.
Many
of the guests
came over to the balcony to peer out
.
Chris
called for
CNI
.
Tony preferred to look at the real thing, forgetting for a moment that even
t
his view was
nothing more than
a visual illusion,
nonetheless listening carefully
to Central News and Information
.

“We have received reports that an incendiary device detonated on the loading doc
k
of Gimbals just moments ago
.
We are shifting live to Barb
a
ra Moorcock
.
Barbara?”

“Ben, the destruction is horrific
.
Body
parts
litter the scene
.
I can’t even begin to estimate the death toll here
.
As you can see,
here’s
what looks like part of a hand
,
and I think that over there is an eye.

“There
’s
a physical crater in the roof at least two hundred yards across
.
Flames continue to race out from it
.
The heat is too intense
for me to get close enough to
estimate the depth
.
The scale is just incomprehensible
.

“Emergency crews are racing about now trying to put out the flames
.
I’m receiving reports now that the pumps
aren’t
functioning and the emergency reservoirs are completely empty, despite having been inspected just yesterday.”

“One second
,
Barbara,
we’re
receiving additional information
.
We have another manifesto from the group called the Green Action Militia
.”
A certain twisted part within Tony jumped in
fascination
.
“The Greenies claim…”

* * *
 

“Good evening, Mr. Kensington.”

“What
!
How did you get in?”
The blond Kensington
sat straight up in bed between two well-endowed young women
.
From the thick smell in the air and the
ir
shared dreamy expression
,
all three suffered from the self-infliction of some type of narcostick and one too many sexual adventures
.

“Actually
,” came the nonchalant reply, “
I slipped in through the plumbing crawlspace.”

Kensington’s eyes focused somewhere behind the short
,
slight
intruder
.
“How dare you invade my home!”
Mr. Kensington demanded
.

The tiny whipcord of a man lifted one of the butts of a narcostick and sniffed it closely
,
with some
dis
d
ain
.

“Wait a minute, this isn’t even my home
,
”
Kensington mumbled almost inaudibly
.
One of the girls rolled over with a moan
,
cuddled up next to
her
benefactor
,
and fell
back to sleep
.
He looked around with
wide
eyes
sporting the qu
i
ck,
jerky
motion
common to his vice
.
He didn’t notice the
intruder’s
bodyguard
-
yellow pants
.

“Do you know who I am?”
Kensington all but shouted.

“Very certainly, good sir.”

“Then you know you are dead!”

“We all bear that curse, Mr. Kensington
.
Unfortunately for both of us, you are going to lose to that curse first.”

“Huh?”

“I’m here to kill you, Mr. Kensington
,
”
the man said without bravado
or rancor
.

With remarkable clarity and speed,
especially for someone so intoxicated,
Kensington pulled up a small machine pistol from beneath his pillow
.
“Really
?
Now tell me just why
you’re
here and who sent you.”

“You mistook your company’s money for your money.”

“How did you find me?”

“Satellite tracking of your tie-tack
.
I enabled it
twelve
hours ago.”

“Who sent you?”

“Your CEO asked me to deliver this message…”
In a blur, the tiny man rotated out of the line of
any possible
fire and smacked the back of his hand across the bridge of his victim’s nose
.
Bone and cartilage exploded forcefully up into
the former VP’s brain before it could even send
a signal to pull the trigger
.
“You’re fired
.”

Mr. Marks nodded as the life left his victim’s eyes.
With great
care and
deliberation
,
he put a mask over each woman’s face and released enough narco gas for the pair to overdose in the space of twenty seconds
.
Carefully
,
he posed one kneeling over Kensington’s body
.
U
sing the young woman’s fingers on the trigger of Kensington’s own machine-pistol, he fired two bursts into the nasal cavity he
had
just destroyed
.
The dead woman slumped forward, one of her augmented breasts spilling obscenely to one side, streaked in blood.

As he examined his handiwork,
Marks
tapped his right foot three times
.
Tr
illions
of submicroscopic nanites
swarmed out of his yellow shoes
, programmed
with the sole purpose to find and destroy his own
DNA
anywhere they might find it
.
Thirty minutes from now they
’d
quite obligatorily render themselves into inert components indistinguishable from the multitudes of other organic compounds that make up
ordinary
dust
.
The assassin faded out the front door, confident that he
—
or more importantly, his employer
—
couldn’t be implicated in the justice he
’d
just imposed.

* * *
 

Home,
Tony
thought, pouring himself
a stiff drink of
r
ye
over ice
.
So many different emotions lashed at him, but one stepped up to dominate his thoughts
.
How could he be happy about the deaths of so many
?

He sipped gently
.
Could it be that he just wanted anything different
?
Maybe he felt he witnessed a little piece of history
.
Maybe
he despised the political games he played to get ahead and wanted someone to get rid of it all
?
Perhaps more specifically,
he wanted to get
out
from under the attentions of his over-amorous mentor
?
No matter what caused it
,
he couldn’t deny
he
felt good
.

His mind
pondered
for several more minutes before it just went blank
.
He downed
the rest of his
drink
and put
the glass
down, catching sight of the half
-
cubic meter of
gray
plastic box sitting innocently in the center of the table
.