Chapter Sixteen - Board Meeting

“Not all of the new technology we have came from the Protectors. In fact, most of it is human-made. Human ingenuity counts for the majority of new creative technologies, and I won’t waste my time listening to people who think that everything we’ve worked hard to invent is merely deconstructions of alien technology.”

--Bob Manperson, defending his companies patents in a congressional hearing, 2029

***

Corporate board meetings were a lot more enjoyable when everyone else at the table was aware that you might shoot them. It was a nice discovery to make, but one I didn’t get to revel in for all that long.

We were only half an hour into the meeting when my phone app went off. “One sec,” I said as I stepped back from the table. After the first ten minutes or so, I started to regret shoving the chair away at the start. Sure, it made me more intimidating, but my feet were starting to ache from standing for so long. “Got a call, I’ll be back.”

I stepped out of the room and into the corridor just outside while answering the call. It was from Lucy.

“You shot the mayor,” she said as an introduction.

“Hi Lucy,” I replied. “Love you too.”

She sighed. “Cat, why are you on TV for shooting the mayor?”

“Because I... shot him?” I said. “I can fancy it up, if you want?”

“Fancy it up?” she asked.

I grinned. “I ensured that his chances of re-election were diminished,” I said while trying to sound as snooty as possible.

It worked, Lucy snorted on the other end of the line. “You’re such an idiot,” she said fondly. “Also, no, I don’t want the job.”

“You sure?” I asked. “You’d get a swanky office. And get to wear girlboss suits. You’d look really hot.”

“I don’t think you should generally get into politics just so that you can wear nice suits and have a nice office,” Lucy said. “Also, if you wanted to see me in a suit, you just had to ask. I’m sure something could be arranged.”

I laughed. “I might take you up on that. We haven’t done any shopping, have we? I was just thinking I needed some new streetwear. Maybe we can hit up some shops in a couple of days. Tomorrow will be busy, and today’s a bust, but the day after?”

“Sure,” Lucy said. “I wouldn’t mind that at all. What are you up to now? Hiding from the cops?”

“Nah, cops wouldn’t know what to do with me. I’m at the Family’s HQ, scaring them shitless. I think they were planning on being lazy about the whole sewer thing, even after I came here, hat in hand, asking for their help. Now they’re reconsidering. It’s nice.”

“Reputation’s important. You just reconfigured the mayor’s brainpan in front of a million people. That’ll make people think twice about messing with you. That’ll be good and bad.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I’ll have to see how it pans out in the long run. But, uh, there’s no undoing that one. Even if Myalis went nuts and deleted all the footage, it’ll still circulate.”

“Can’t put the bullet back in the barrel?” Lucy asked.

I shook my head. “That was awful.”

“I try,” Lucy chuckled. “Think the Family will be able to handle everything now?”

“No. I’ll still need to help them so that they can help me, but at least they’re taking it seriously now. I... should probably go.”

“That’s okay,” she said. “You’ll be back soon? I’m making submarines. I’ve got chicken and bacon and turkey and tofu and six kinds of cheese.”

“Are you going to put any vegetables in the subs?” I asked.

“Where would I fit them?”

“I can’t wait to try it out. Keep some warm for me, I should be back home in... urgh, three, maybe four hours?”

“Alright,” Lucy said. “Love ya.”

“Love ya too,” I replied as I carefully hung up.

I stood in the corridor for a moment, eyes closed as I let the stress settle. The back of my mind had been going for a while, worrying about everything all at once, but Lucy was okay with it, and she was probably right besides. This might be a good thing. Dupont deserved it, in any case. The ass was putting the entire city at risk with his bullshit.

Maybe I could talk to some friends about it? Gomorrah had a level head for this kind of stuff. Though I wasn’t sure about her stance when it came to shooting people as opposed to burning aliens.

Oh well.

Turning around, I stepped back into the conference room, grabbed the chair I’d shoved aside earlier, and sat myself down at the head of the table. “Alright, sorry about that. Where are we now?”

What followed was a fairly productive hour. The suits might have come here to appease me, but once they caught on that I wanted to work not just have my ass kissed, they started to actually put in the time to get things done.

The meeting turned into a more spread out... thing, with the different suits making calls, checking over AI-drafted emails and riding the backs of some poor interns and underlings to push things along.

Myalis was the real game changer, though.

“Huh,” I said after being quiet for nearly half an hour. That got some heads to rise, so I pointed to one of the office chicks. “That company you hired, uh... Green Impact Ecological Sewage? They just took your cash and funnelled it away. They’re not doing shit.”

“Um,” she said. “Thank you. I’ll start the charge-back proceedings and send the contract to legal.”

I nodded, then continued to skim through Myalis’ reports. She was able to more or less verify every company, subsidiary, and independent contractor, which was impressive because with every hour that passed another couple hundred people were mobilised towards fixing the sewers.

This was quickly growing into a project. I didn’t like the idea of multiple levels of management, but with as many companies as there were working together all at once, it was going to be impossible to keep tabs on anyone without that kind of net.

Maybe the Family’s slow moves at the start were justified after all. Committees to arrange committees.

“Ah, Miss Stray Cat,” Eric said as he came over. If he had a hat he’d be holding it in his little hands looking pitiful with it. “We’ve arranged a space for you to summon up the equipment you, um, agreed to provide, ma’am.”

“Right,” I said. “You guys in here keep up the good work.”

The work was starting to move forwards. Slowly. The first people on site were inspectors. Independently hired ones, with at least a few years of experience and a low corruption index score. They were scouring the sewers right now, checking on the state of things and sending their findings back.

It was bleak, for the most part. There were some areas that were better than I’d hoped, mostly close to some corps that had decided to maintain things on their own dime for a while. Other parts were outright fucked. There was a section of a main sewer line that had collapsed months ago, the entire pipe breaking open as the earth shifted around it. Blackwater was seeping out into the dirt around the pipe and probably into the water table.

When that pipe was large enough for two city buses to drive past each other within it, that meant that it was a problem.

But it could, in theory, be fixed. It would just cost a fortune. That fortune had to come from somewhere.

That somewhere was me.

By all rights, it should have come from the city and its taxes, but the Family said that for whatever reason, the city bureaucratic engine was currently stalled out.

I followed Eric through the headquarters until we reached a room whose door was only labelled as Warehouse 17. The corridors up until there were all the pretty faux-marble ones, with nice paintings every few metres and carefully placed sofas for guests to sit on, so it was a little strange when Eric opened a door into a room that really fit its name.

Warehouse 17 was a warehouse. It was all cement and shelves, and the space was large enough to fit a dozen semi-trailers worth of stuff. There was even a forklift parked in the corner, and some garage doors presumably leading deeper into the building’s less pretty sections.

Eric handed me a computer pad before I could say anything. It had a list of the shit the Family wanted.

Half of it was gear and equipment for the reconstruction. Multi-tools, small hand-held scanning devices, stuff that I could scrounge up that would be better than anything commercially available. It accounted for three-quarters of the budget.

The rest were odds and ends. Different sorts of grenades, guns, ammunition, some gear, then a lot of household stuff that I happened to have access to from my catalogues.

I sighed. The goal here was simple. I’d give them fodder to deconstruct and they’d bankroll this project off of the future profits. I’d be getting my share of royalties from it, of course.

Didn’t stop me from feeling like a bit of a sellout.

***