Soulless Victories (Corporate Wars Book 2) by S. Walker

Author:S. Walker [Walker, S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-05-07T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 25

No Difficulties Here

Aldi somehow managed to blend exhaustion, irritability and body aches into a single vocal inflection. "So, what's the problem?"

"Did you not hear the-" Tinker paused in the middle of using the large pulldown workspace. On the left she had a callout showing incoming drone waves, with distance markers and terrain overviews on the right. Both windows had a lot of notes and highlighting. In the background several expanded charts of numbers guesstimated how fast drones were multiplying. There was even a nicely curved graph line with the upper end annotated "We Are All Screwed". It wasn't pretty.

For the last fifteen minutes she'd been going nonstop, with occasional interjections from a short man in heavily oil-stained overalls and an absolute monster of a bearded guy. Aldi recognized the size and beard, although the clothes were different: Harland, he thought. Or Hale? He wasn't sure which. But the man moved like a confrontation in progress and he obviously knew Tinker somehow. Which was interesting enough all by itself and Aldi would really like to talk a bit. After about a year of sleep and enough hot water to boil his skin off.

In the meantime he was in some sort of... combat briefing? It felt like one. There was a lot of recording footage, some horrifying up close images and a couple of red countdowns. Or perhaps it was an Emergency Coordinator thing? Either way Tinker was presenting the whole haphazard rundown inside an impressively equipped machinist facility. Which happened to be attached to what looked very much like a drone operations setup; another detail to check on later. It seemed fascinating. If only he wasn't so incredibly exhausted.

So when the short woman paused for breath he threw in the relevant question.

At his interruption she stopped, then practically slumped in the only chair with both hands over her face. "Okay, where did you lose track? I'll just... start over from there."

Harland raised a hand, then put it down to pat Aldi on the shoulder in an encouraging way. "Drifted off towards the end. Around the exploding part, I think."

"Okay. Right. So, we're identifying approaches through the canyons." Tinker flipped the workspace images back to a topographical map of the area, then highlighted gaps between clusters of lines. "We're going to blast them closed and delay the flood longer. But we need-"

It was a mark of how tired he was that Aldi actually interrupted. "No, I got that. It's demolition planning. But I don't get the problem. Wait, no," now he was the one rubbing his face, trying to work sensation back into skin that was starting to feel like a rubber mask. "I'm saying this wrong. What I'm trying to say is why am I here? What can I do to help?"

Small palms came down on dirty skinsuit knees. Tinker hunched forward in a seated stretch, both arms stiff and back arched. She stared at the ceiling beams for a long moment, then relaxed and shook both hands out. Aldi thought it looked a bit like a cat coming out of a long nap.

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