An Eighty Percent Solution (CorpGov) (61 page)

“
O
ur projections tell us why this is happening, but do we have any intel
?”

“The operatives we do have in the field
report hearing
rumors of key GAM members dying, including their leader
.
Even better,
the rumor on the street is
there
’
s a power struggle among those left.”

“This is excellent news.”

“This means that the number of actions from the GAM in the future will be reduced?”

“Perhaps even eliminated," she said, sparing a cold look at
Nanogate
.
Nanogate
didn’t even fli
n
ch
.
Hers was not the first assassin to
fail against him.

“I suggest we keep
this on the agenda…”

“Advisory,” came a pleasant
computer
-
generated voice
.
“Stocks of all major corporations experiencing significant drop in value based on broad sell and put activity
.”
That program would only activate in the case of a
ten percent
or more drop in all major stocks.

“What?”

The room echoed with a resounding boom
.
Dust filtered down from the ceiling and one window cracked afterward with a loud report.

“This facility is under attack,” said
the same
soft, but obviously artificial
,
female voice
.
“Please remain calm.”

* * *
 

Tony counted on his fingers
.
Before he reached eight, the building shuddered and flame licked briefly down the tube
.
Ignoring the incendiaries, Tony jumped into the grav tube just in time to hear two almost simultaneous tremors
.
One would be Andrea setting off the pinch
.
The other would be the opening blast against the response team.

His guts s
a
nk to the floor as the grav tube flung him upward
.
They then slammed in
to his mouth as
his ascent slowed
.
Even before he arrived
,
a
sweet stench of burnt flesh mixed with the acrid odor of smoldering plastic filled his nose
.
Tony scrambled for a perch as a black gaping maw, partially obscured by smoke, replaced the
customary
landing ledge
.

Several small fires that had been computers, notepads
,
or even a table burned fitfully
.
Nothing else remained of the room except
heaps of
smoldering
biologic
.
One of the mounds moved slowly, crawling in a seemingly random direction
.
Tony walked up, put his gauss
carbine
to the indistinguishable mound and pulled the trigger
.
The lump
stopped moving in a sickening splash of something between liquid and solid.

Christine landed
from the grav chute
one
second behind him
and
Augustine just seconds after that
.
Arthur brought up the rear a few seconds later
.
Tony
had
already
moved
toward
what had been the doorway
.
The door itself lay askew halfway down the hall
.
Tony wouldn’t need the explosives he brought to gain entry
.

The four of them marched in an open diamond formation,
with
Tony leading
,
into the meeting room
.
Seven of the
ten most powerful people in the
solar system
already stood, looking for something to do, or some way to escape
.
The other three just gaped
.

“What are you
—
”
one of them sputtered.

Tony interrupted with a blast from his gauss gun into the ceiling
.
Christine and Augustine stood beside him covering the council
.

“I beg your attention, ladies and gentlemen
.
Sorry for the theatrics
,
but I needed your attention.
It’s
time to change your little cabal here into a positive force.”

“Welcome, Tony,”
Nanogate
said
.
“You were very effective
.”

Christine shot the man in the fleshy part of the arm
.
His scream and subsequent whimpering stifled anyone else from making comment.

“Oh, quit whining
.
She only nicked you
.
Trust me when I say she could easily have chosen to remove a single testicle had she taken it in her mind
.”

Completely out of character, Christine smiled
.

“Now that
we’ve settled that
, I want you all against the window, facing out at our fair city
.
And before you think
you’re
only buying time until the cavalry arrives, we’ve neutralized everything
,
including the
Metro response
.
If you look out
,
you might just see the
police
involved in
a riot at the Main Metro complex itself
.

“Now that I’ve taken hope from you, I will give it back
.
Behave and your families will live
.”

One woman half turned toward Tony
, but froze as Christine’s weapon swung about to point at her head.

“That’s right
,” Tony went on. “
We have each of your families ready to be vaped
.
We have trigger teams shadowing all of them, including yours, sir, on their holiday on Io.
Now, I want you each to announce which corporation you head
.”

Each went in turn from one end to the other.
Wisely, none of them hesitated or protested.

“Good
.
Now
I’ll
answer the question put to me earlier
by
Nanogate
.
Yes, I was a very effective weapon for
this council
.
Your
plan worked
,
after a
fashion
.
You’ve decimated the ranks of the GAM.
”

“So this is revenge?”
Percomm Systems
spat back.

“No
.
If this were revenge
,
I’d have tracked down how to hurt each of you the worst,” Tony said as he paced up and down the line
.
“Torture your daughter, maybe?” he asked one executive
.
“Or maybe make your grandson a vegetable?” he said walking by another
.
“How about removing the genitalia of your lover and giving it to your wife?
Bottom line, this is the start of something new
…perhaps
tainted by just a smidge of justice.”

“So you want to kill us and take over?”

“Hell
,
no,” Augustine
laughed as she
answered.

“I have to agree with my colleague
.
First off, we don’t have the experience to run your companies
.
Your successors would soon
oust us
.
Even if we could, we don’t want this kind of power
.
We do
,
however
,
want those who exercise supreme power to be answerable to the people.”

“How are you going to do that
?
” Wintel asked
.
“You can’t post a guard on each of us
twenty-four/seven
to make sure we behave.”

“True
.
We can’t
.
But
then our actions against your corporations have made each of us very wealthy
.
So wealthy
,
in fact
,
that
we’ll
be funding multiple independent watchdog organizations, each with enough capital to start a small army
.
Remember how easily our small organization got to you
.
Think of how easily someone could do it with military hardware.”

“So
you’re
going to let us live?”
CNI
asked
.

“Well, that depends
.
We obviously can’t kill you all
,
or we lose our object lesson here
.
But then letting you all go would lose its impact
.
You’d
eventually think it was a fluke and try to do something stupid.
”

“So what
does
it depend on?”

“This pretty young lady here is going to draw lots
.
Those drawn will be killed outright
.
It isn’t a perfect plan, but then none is
.
I honestly don’t know how to restore full public responsibility
.
I leave that for you to decide
,
knowing that we
, and many like us
,
will be watching
.
Note that some of them
w
on’t quite have our patience.
”

“Why would we just stand still and wait to be killed?”

“First of all, do you think even the ten of you, unarmed, could overcome four trained, armed guerilla fighters
?
But
,
more importantly
,
if even one of you resists
,
we will kill each
and every one
of your families
.
That includes any
wife, parent, child, lover, friend, pet
,
or bastard
within two generations
.”

The executives fidgeted but said nothing.

“Christine, if you please
.
Oh, and did I mention,
we’ll
be drawing eight names
…
exactly eighty percent.”

Author’s Note:

I want to thank you for reading
An Eighty Percent Solution
.
I truly hope
you’ve
enjoyed it
!
Because of the curse or blessing of my creative side
,
I
not only
write, I
also
game master roleplaying games and
undertake
many other activities where I invent to entertain
.
It
’
s unlikely that
in my lifetime my creativity will wane.
Because I write to entertain
,
I must
also
take this occasion to
drag out my podium
: