Everyone groaned, but the man nodded, "Fine, fine, Doctor."
A few minutes later, the man chairing the meeting said, "I'm not a doctor or a techie, but if I saw that in a film or a BD, I'd call bullshit. Is this for real? I couldn't really see what she was doing."
"One hundred per cent. The surgeon in Watson was just as flummoxed as I was. It shouldn't really have worked, but it did. Plus, she showed an incredible level of knowledge of human anatomy and ingenuity on just the attempt; even if it had failed, I would have quietly had a word with you. But, I figured since we had to have this meeting anyway, I would bring it up," the medical director said.
"Can you play back the part where she saves that woman with the fucked up leg? And do you have the footage from where the team arrived and found the VIP? If so, play it side to side," the vice president commanded.
"Just a moment, we have that," said Kim, and then two videos were played back to back.
"Miss No Leg was sitting at the VIP's table alone?" commented the medical director, "And that's an expensive dress."
The vice president nodded, "Indeed. Check to see where she was taken, and get an interhospital transfer to our trauma centre in Watson. We'll cover the costs for the board member's joytoy, and we'll make fifty times as much just off his appreciation alone. This does tell me that he wasn't Maelstrom's target, though, just bad luck. Whoever is responsible for security at that building is gonna have to commit seppuku. For a screw-up this big, the Italians will pretend to be Japanese just long enough to make them do it, too," said the canny vice president.
Then the man hummed and nodded, "Alright. We all know pretty much what we're going to do about the Biotechnica board situation, so let's table that for now. Switching focus to this woman, Ryan, what do we know about her?"
The director of the Resources in People department in Night City coughed into his hand. As a good underling, he had already pulled up all the data he had as soon as this new hire had started to be discussed and had already sent directions to the hiring manager handling her case, "Sir. Her name is Taylor Hebert. Father is one Daniel Hebert, Major in Militech Armed Forces, former NUSA State Department, deceased. Mother is Annette Rose Hebert, née Astor-Armstrong, deceased. She was at the Regional Director level at Militech when she died in an inter-corporate dispute involving an unknown party, possibly Kang Tao or Arasaka. Ms Hebert is sixteen years of age, third generation Militech dependent on her father's side. Top scores at the Night City Health Science Centre, currently employed by a small ground ambulance service as a paramedic."
The legal woman remarked, amused, "Sixteen?! Here comes the Trauma Teen, right, Tyler?" That caused everyone but the VP to laugh, but when the boss wasn't laughing, everyone paused, a little concerned.
"Uh, what was her mother's name?" the Vice President asked.
The HR man said, "Annette Hebert." To which the VP waved a hand.
"No! Her maiden name!" he hissed.
Mr Davis said after a pause, "Oh. Annette Astor-Armstrong. Why?"
"Oh, no real reason. I was just curious. As an aside, just a matter of trivia for you in the future, the Astor-Armstrong is a cadet branch of the Astor family. You know. The trillionaires," the vice president said mildly. Then he glanced at the lawyer present, "Do we have any information on whether or not that is a coincidence?"
She shrugged, "I just checked. No publically acknowledged member of that family by the name of Annette Rose. Disowned, maybe? If so, maybe we should blackball this girl."
"No, no. In a family at that level, if you're disowned, and they really mean it, you die . Publicly. Assuming it isn't a coincidence if they let her marry this common soldier without so much as even flatlining him and kidnapping her back, then they probably had a real sweet spot for her. I don't see how it could be a coincidence, but I'll check in with International Intel and verify it, but either case let's just pretend we didn't hear any of that," said the VP.
The HR man looked a lot more nervous now but nodded, "Uh... I have already had the hiring manager woken up. He called Ms Hebert already and extended a TJO, pending her acceptance. He did mention that she mentioned having an attorney review the contract, so we weren't going to put anything questionable in it. That tracks with her being third generation Militech, though."
The VP nodded, "Good work. We don't want her being tempted back over to Militech Evac just on the basis of her clinical skills. It's crazy that they didn't already offer her a job. Maybe she soured on them? Both parents died in their service, after all. Well, whatever, we'll close this file for now. It's not like it's that unusual for kids to rebel and get a job at a competitor, especially us, right Maxine?"
The lawyer laughed and flipped him the bird, "I told you that in confidence!" But it was clear she wasn't that upset.
"Hahaha... alright, before I close the meeting, I want a PR team to find that couple. The one she saved after everything went down. Give them both a complimentary twelve-month Gold package, but only if we can use their story in marketing materials; we can use stuff like that. Then see if we can use anything from her saving that security guy for marketing without it looking bad. Maybe not; we'd prefer our guys to seem invincible, but run it by the team." There were nods around, and then he said, "Okay, the meeting is closed. The AI will construct the minutes and forward them to each of you for approval, but I'm increasing the confidentiality classification level of a portion of this meeting to a compartmentalisation code level... which is, uhh... Chartreuse-Pantyhose... what the fuck, computer? Why do you always pick such weird fucking names."
He shook his head, "Anyway, we'll use this code word for subsequent mentions of the Astor family and this new hire together. And she better sign that contract, Davis! Just for those crazy skills alone!"
"Uh, yes, sir!" stammered the man.
The security guys were a little perplexed at both how I was walking back into the Tower wearing armour and how I ended up with more weapons than when I started with.
One of the guards said, "Oh, this is a nice SMG," with the other glancing at it and nodding.
"Yeah, there is talk about buying these in bulk. Kang Tao makes good work. Used to, you'd only have Arasaka to choose from in SmartWeapons, but now Kang Tao is showing them a thing or two," the second man said before placing my newly stolen submachinegun in the locker next to my other weapons.
The first guy waved me through and then asked, "Did Bandbox make it? We heard what happened when the second flight lifted off. I like streaming his BDs sometimes; it would suck if he was flatlined by some stupid 'Strom gonk."
That's why he seemed familiar! Alt-Taylor had seen him on the television show Night after Night with Quincy Strange. They did a special on Trauma Team, and Mr Bandbox was one of the featured people. He became slightly famous on the local net as something of a company spox. He even scrolled BDs, although she had never experienced any. It wasn't a surprise; he was preternaturally handsome, but in a natural-looking way that only a very, very good biosculpt clinic could provide. Or amazing genes, I supposed.
"I'm not sure. He was alive when the second team took him away. I think he should make it if they got him to a trauma centre quickly," I temporised. That was what I was curious about too. They nodded and told me that he had only been working on the Flight Team for two years. Apparently, it was common for Security Specialists to be hired and work for a while doing their job as guards or in the actual Trauma Team military force or even the Debt Recovery Teams before shifting to a flight team status. That last one sounded a bit ominous.
They didn't hold me up after that, and I got on the elevator and back up to the bravo base. The whole crew was there in the living room area, and when I came in, Dr Anno asked, "What happened? Alpha said you built a fucking bypass heart out of the coolant pump on his armour?" He looked flabbergasted.
I blinked at him, "That's what I want to know. Did he make it?"
"Yeah, Alpha got him to the Trauma Team centre in Watson in just two and a half minutes. An entire trauma bay was waiting for him. They're still working on him now, of course, but they got him connected to an actual bypass now while they triage the damage," the man called Mr Teddy Bear said, then he waved at me, "Go get changed! Then we're going to download the helmet cam audio-visual and watch just what the fuck you did! It's gotta be crazy!"
Err, shit. I wondered what that would look like. It wasn't like I could delete the video now; it probably already started downloading into Trauma Team servers as soon as I walked into the tower. Oh well, I would just deal with it. It was good to see it, too, as I only partially remembered building the bypass heart.
I nodded and went into the spare bedroom they were lending me and doffed the armour. I wondered if they wanted me to decon it myself, as there was both 'Strom blood and blonde man blood on it. I'd find out later. I set them aside and got dressed back in my street clothes. Luckily, the cooling system really was very good as I wasn't sweating hardly at all. Otherwise, I'd have hit the showers first.
They had the video playing on the large wall screen as I walked out. "We're gonna get written up for that," the man named Mercy said, annoyed when they paused and switched to slow motion to watch the mostly dismembered 'Strom borg aim the giant revolver at Bandbox.
"Why?" I asked curiously.
Mercy sighed, "Didn't death check the 'Stroms as we passed before we turned our back to them. But they just got chewed up by the minigun, so we figured they were all dead."
"Death check? Wouldn't that take too long when you had a patient, plus wouldn't it be hazardous to get close to them anyway?" I asked, perplexed. I was picturing them going and placing their fingers on the downed Maelstrom member's necks.
Mercy turned to look at me, amused, "You check to see if they're dead by shooting them a couple times in the head as you pass. Don't worry, they'll teach you that in basic. Anno and I have already gotten confirmation that they're going to offer you the job." Oh. Well. That sounded less like a check and more like an execution, but I supposed the consequences for when you didn't do it were staring me in the face. I honestly hoped I wouldn't really be expected to randomly apply a coup de grace to injured gang members as a matter of course.
Since he had been told about my job offer, I guessed Mercy was the equivalent of the clinical base lead. The security base lead? I nodded, "I hope you guys don't get in too much trouble... but, yeah. The hiring manager called me when I was in the cab on the ride back. Oh, by the way... I grabbed that giant revolver that shot Mr Bandbox. I figured he might like it as a souvenir. It's a Soviet Burya, Glory to Socialist Science ." I said the last with an exaggeratedly fake Russian accent.
"Probably not too much. We'll probably get scolded and get remedial training, but at the same time, we saved the client, and he was a real VIP too. Even a few more seconds might have meant his death. Normally it takes multiple attaboys to outweigh one aw shit, but in this case, they'll likely milk the whole thing. So it'll even out." Then he grinned, "Oh, badass. Those are actually kind of rare and expensive. I don't know if he'll be able to use it; you almost need a full arm replacement to fire those things without breaking something," Mercy said, looking back at the screen.
I frowned a little, "Mr Bandbox might be looking at an arm replacement; here, start the playback, and I'll show you what I mean."
They nodded and continued playback, but they replayed the point where Mr Bandbox got shot several times, in slow motion, whistling. I noticed where Mercy suddenly shifted into a much faster speed when he shot the shooter. It was clear he had a Sandevistan. Mercy suddenly frowned and rewound the video, playing back the time when I turned around several times. Finally, he asked, apparently seeing something similar in the way I had moved, "New girl, you have a Sandy?"
"Ah, no. I do have a Kerenzikov, though. A Kang Tao model," I said simply. I was pretty sure that getting hired here would result in a total examination of all of my cybernetics, anyway, so it wasn't exactly a secret. My custom liver just looked like a custom liver at the moment, which wasn't too shocking. After I got hired, I'd finish connecting the arteries to it.
Mercy looked surprised, but the pilots both turned to look at me and nodded, one of them saying, "Nice. You want to go to flight training?"
Huh? I shook my head at him, "No. Why would you say that?"
"All combat pilots have to have boostware; it's mandatory. Corporate generally prefers one pilot to have a Kerenzikov with the other having a Sandy, which means they prefer to hire Kerenzikov people with a long-time history of use with little psychological changes. Very few people can handle it. Sometimes it's cheaper to find a solo with a long history of use on the Security team and send them through flight school if the pool of former military pilots is shallow. I have a Militech model Kerenzikov that slows the experience of time by about half, doubles reflexes, combined with a custom set of Kiroshi aviator optics that can sample images I see at one thousand hertz. This video looks like a slide show to me. Makes taking dates to movies a pain in the ass," the senior pilot said, amused.
I nodded. I had that problem too. It was why I always played videos using my deck, as I could speed up their playback speed to something that seemed normal.
They continued the playback, this time going through the entire thing up until I got into the cab. Then the clinicians rewound and kept replaying the time I was working on Mr Bandbox.
"Fuck, I can't see what you're doing. Are you installing this shit by feel? You keep looking up for a moment when you get to an interesting part. Also, you're moving at super speed. What the fuck," said Mr Teddy Bear.
They watched a few times more in slow motion, and I was curious too. Did my power help me with that? Glancing away at times when it was doing something weird? If so, thanks!
Anno said, "I see what you mean by Bandbox might need some new arms. You cut all the blood flow to his extremities. I'm guessing it was too much to expect some kind of high-flow type of solution when you're mainly using IV tubing and a coolant pump."
I nodded. Depending on how soon they got a real heart or temporary replacement hooked up to him, his arms and legs might have gone a long time without perfusing. "I think they could repair the damage with nano treatments, but they might offer him replacement limbs too. Will he be on the hook for any of the cost?" I asked, curious.
