Bubblegum Crisis: Stage Three

Part Twenty

James Yamako, interestingly, did not immediately resign after Sylia demoted him. Instead he went begging to Quincy.

"But she can't do this to me!" the former head of cyber-security bleated. "I'm too senior to be demoted like this!"

'She's not just demoting you, you're probably going to get fired,' a still shaken Quincy thought. He had not expected Sylia to so completely seize the power she had a right to. Worse, he had been rather stunned by her accusations of corruption in Genom. He had been aware of some underhanded goings on, but...

"There's not much I can do. Sylia does have that authority," Quincy explained. At the other man's rather desperate look he continued, "I can transfer you into another department, possibly. But that's ALL I could do."

"Oh, thank you sir," James sighed, not quite grasping that this was only a stay of execution. And that only if he was lucky and Sylia didn't notice.

Once he finally got the kid out the door, Quincy opened up the file that Sylia had sent him. The details of internal corruption at Genom were quite dismaying, especially since he had been running the company. He should have known.

On principle, Quincy knew he should be going over to Sylia's office and offering to resign. The buck, as they say, stopped with him. But he was retiring anyway in a few months, and frankly he didn't see the point. As well, he had appointed the managers. If they had allowed their staffs to run wild, well... that wasn't HIS fault.

His other worries appeared to be groundless. There were no indications that Sylia knew about some of his own underhanded activities, nor was there any trace of his secret 'partner.' And the Mason connection had died with him & the destruction of his files. All he had to do was keep his head down and not draw attention to himself until he retired.

How hard could that be?

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

"I think we do need to dig a bit deeper into Quincy himself," Priss noted as they left the building after a hard day's work.

"You'd think he'd let his hands get dirty? That's what he kept Mason around for," Reika noted quite cynically.

"You really don't like him, do you?" Sylia asked wryly.

"I worked under him for several years," Reika said with a shrug, "don't let the old man act fool you. He's as cunning as they come, and as dirty too."

"The problem would be catching him at it," Nene noted mildly as they waited for Priss and Linna to check the elevator.

"Clear," Linna said as they waved them in.

"I haven\t worked directly for him, so I can't say if he's that scummy," Priss noted as they went into the booth, "but the file we have looks TOO clean."

"Really?" Linna raised her eyebrows.

"There's a lot of editing been done," Nene agreed, "there's no mention of 'special projects' and Mason, when he worked directly for Quincy."

The elevator smoothly descended as Sylia said, "I'm torn on this. On one hand, I do think we should investigate, but on the other he is retiring soon..."

"All the more reason to nail him," Priss noted as they reached the parking garage, "once he's gone, I bet all the files would just mysteriously disappear."

"Like that fire we just had," Nene scowled.

"Any luck with the reconstruction of files?" Reikla asked curiously.

"Still working on it," Nene admitted, "I kinda got side tracked helping Sylia pull together the incriminating data on the Executives..."

As they moved into the garage itself, Linna tapped the sunglasses she wore. She and Priss, as the primary bodyguards, had been issued then by Sylia, and they had several scanning functions not available to average folks.

"Lotta boomers in here," Linna warned flatly.

Priss activated her own glasses then growled out, "Ten, and they are rapidly converging on our position."

Nene cursed softly as she drew her pistol. Reika followed even as she asked, "Could it be a coincidence...? Never mind."

"Based on our experience, no," Sylia said as the Boomers came into view.

There were a mix of male and female types, all advancing past the cars, expressions oddly blank. Normally Boomers had a 'emotive' subroutine running, making them seem more humanistic. That apparently shut down when they were ovverrided like this.

"Taking the shot," Priss warned, then opened up with her railgun.

The first shot hit the body, staggering the lead boomer. Shockingly it didn't stop it, the figure lumbering forward. Priss and Linna both opened up, getting multiple hits and finally dropping it.

"What the hell?" Linna muttered.

"Armored," Sylia noted flatly, "usually used as a bodyguard type."

"Well, isn't that ironic," Reika muttered. She tried her phone then shook her head, "Jamming, can't even get the wireless internet."

"Great. Head for the car?" Nene suggested as they dropped another Boomer, the others still advancing steadily.

"Bet you it's been booby trapped," Priss said.

"Gotta look," Linna shrugged as they combined fire at another boomer.

"We need bigger guns," Reika noted as they worked their way towards the car.

"If we get out of this," Sylia flashed a smile as she fired her own pistol in a two handed grip, "it's the next thing on the agenda."

Nene dropped to her knees beside the car. "Bomb!" she yelled.

Priss cursed. "Break towards the enterance?" she offered.

"And get us away from the bomb too," Sylia agreed, the group firing rapidly as they tried to make a break for it.

"They are trying to push us back towards the bomb," Linna noted as she calmly head shot a regular boomer.

"Damn it," Priss growled as they heard a loud clang.

"Came from the enterance," Nene noted as they weaved between cars trying to get some room between them and the attackers.

BOOM!

A VERY big gun blew a Boomer's head into wreckage, then the massive armored figure stomped into view. The Battle Mover was state of the art, if a bit bulky, and it carried a scaled up rifle. With mechanical precision it blasted the surviving five boomers, leaving them smoking wrecks.

"I want one of those," Priss noted admiringly.

"Come on, move away from the car," Sylia reminded everyone. They hurried over to the battle mover just as the bomb detonated, the explosive charge nearly flipping the car over and causing it to burst into flames.

"That was a nice car too," the driver of the battle mover noted as the pilot's hatch flipped up.

"Jeena Malso," Sylia recognized her immediately, "Your timing is impressive."

"What made you decide to ride to our rescue?" Nene asked with a smile.

"Security system went down on the entire level, but no one can find what's wrong. I figured it smelled," Jeena shrugged.

"We really need to figure out how in hell they keep doing this," Priss sighed.

"Thank you for the help," Sylia shook Jeena's hand firmly.

"You're welcome," Jeena flashed a smile, "been getting pretty damn tired of being on the sidelines of all this, too."

Sylia gave her a thoughtful look, "We might see what we can do about that, as well."

To be continued...