The Weapon - Genesis - part 12
By Diana the Valkyrie
The board meeting


It was the usual setup. Big polished table, jugs of ice water, little
notepads, ballpoint pens with a company logo, and six fat cats sitting in six
fat chairs. The secretary sat back from the table by the wall, and Scott took
his place at the head of the table, until Wendy picked up his chair with him
in it, and dumped it to her left. She stood at the head of the table, hovering
several inches above the ground, and look round at the faces in front of her.
Then she pounded the table with her hand, and you could feel the room shake.
"The meeting starts now."

One of the men stood up. "I object. By what right are you here? You're not
even a shareholder. Get out of this meeting." "What's your name, asshole?" she
replied. "Dave Carfax, I'm the VP of Finance here, this is none of your
fucking business, lady in the funny suit. Now bugger off."

Mistake. Big mistake. "Actually, it is my business," she said, very softly.
"Who said?" "Do you know what happens when a dam bursts?" She swept up a jug
of ice water from the table and dumped it over his head. "You get water." She
dumped a second jug over his head. "A lot of water." She dumped a third jug.
"A fuck load of water. And eighteen people get killed, and that's what makes
it my business, and the business of anyone else who cares about other people
more than they care about the fucking profits of this fucking company. Is that
clear?"

The shock of the ice water paralysed him; the shock of the attack left the
rest of the men speechless. The only sounds were the scratching of a pencil as
the secretary faithfully recorded every word.

"Now then, let's get to the one and only agenda item. How to keep you assholes
from getting fifty years in prison. Each. Because right now, you're looking at
multiple charges of manslaughter, on account of you reduced the safety margin
for this dam despite being warned what could happen."

There was silence. A long silence. "P - p - prison?" "Yeah, that's what they
do with people who break the law, hadn't you heard?" "B-b-but .." "Shut up and
listen. Here's what's going to happen next. You're going to get hit from three
directions. The first thing that will hit you, is the media shitstorm, when
the press headlines the fact that your greed led to this disaster. You'll be
tried and convicted by the press, trussed up like turkeys and hung out to dry
without any chance of defence, the press aren't interested in a fair trial,
all they want is a good story, and this one's a doozy. Then the bottom will
fall out of your share price when the negligence lawsuits start to hit you,
and you won't be able to revolve your financing, because the banks only lend
to people who don't need money, so there's a good chance that the whole
company will go down. And then the criminal charges will start to arrive,
because the criminal law doesn't move fast; the wheels of justice grind
slowly, but they grind exceedingly small, and you'll be the hamburger they
grind. Got all that so far?"

Three men nodded, two were sitting rigid and unmoving in total shock, and one
was still trying to recover from three jugs of ice water dumped on his head.

"OK, so you think that's bad? It gets worse." "How can it get worse," asked
Scott miserably, "you already have us pilloried by the press, bankrupted by
the banks and locked up for half a century." "This isn't the only project
you've done that endangers human lives." Scott shook his head, slowly. "No.
No. I'm not hearing this." "You thought there was something different about
this project? You've been doing this for years. Cut the costs, increase the
profits, share price goes up, your options go through the roof. Good for the
shareholders, great for the board, fuck the people. Well, now it caught up
with you."

"You have evidence of this, young lady?" asked the man who was still dripping
wet. She turned to regard him, and spoke more gently. "I don't need evidence,
honey. This isn't a court of law, I'm not a judge and jury. That comes later,
and yes, they'll subpoena your engineers, they'll seize your files, and your
off-site backups, all the canaries will sing their little hearts out to save
their skins, and every single skeleton in your big old cupboard will come
clanking out."

Scott spoke again. "I can't believe we got ourselves into this. And there's no
way out?" "Yes, there might be. No promises. But there just might be a way to
salvage something from this mess." "How, how" several of them asked, eagerly.
She walked round to the man she'd thrown the water at. "You OK, honey?" He
nodded. "Sorry about that, you pissed me off a little. Don't tell me to bugger
off again, OK?" "You got it," he said. "And stop calling me 'lady', you call
me The Weapon, the Defender of the People. Got that?" He nodded. "Yes,
Defender." She smiled at him, and stroked his cheek. "Good boy."

She turned to the secretary. "Getting all this?" "Yes, Defender." "OK, here's
what you do. Call it Project Repentance. You set up three teams; finance,
engineering and PR. No-one's allowed to talk to the press except the PR
people; everyone else briefs them. The task of the PR people is to understand
that the company is trying to do now, and communicate that to the press." "And
what are we trying to do?" asked Scott. "You're going to re-examine every
project you've done for the last fifty years, from a safety point of view, and
figure out the safety factor that you have in each of them. And if it isn't
high enough by the standards of current civil engineering practice, You're
going to fix the problem, at your own expense."

There was an immediate babble of voices. "We can't ... "There isn't the
resources ..." "Why should we carry the can for what other people did 50 years
ago ..." Wendy smashed her fist down on the table again, and you could see it
bounce slightly from the impact. "Shut up", she whispered, into the resulting
silence. "Redemption can only come through sincere repentance. When people see
that you're going back fifty years on this, and that even projects that met
the safety standards at that time are going to be made safer, they'll
understand that there is a real change happening at Kettering. The resources?
You'll get them. You have to. You'll sell your own personal assets if you have
to, in order to fund this. You'll sell your shares, your houses, your yachts,
your cars, your wife's fur coats, your kid's skateboards, everything. Because
by doing that, you'll demonstrate that you really are sorry for the mess.
Nothing can bring back the eighteen that died, but by heaven you can do your
best to stop it happening again!"

A couple of them nodded. "Well?" she asked. "Now we vote. Those in favour of
this action plan, raise your hands." All the hands went up, even the
secretary. "Carried unanimously," she said, smiling. "Now, Larry, you get
George Sparford here, he'll lead the engineering team. Carfax, get a finance
task force together, you're job is to squeeze the board till the pips squeak,
and get the cash together to keep this company running while Project
Repentance runs. And Larry, you'll do the PR job. The press will want to talk
about the dam disaster and other bad things, you keep them focussed on Project
Repentance, about how you're going to make up for all the bad things done by
you *and* your predecessors. You can't have some junior doing that job, not in
these circumstances, you're the guy in the hot seat, you're the front man, get
used to it." He nodded. "And what will you do?" he asked her. "Tonight, I'm
doing Chicken Provencale with aubergines and sweet potatoes. If you thought
I'm going to help you clear up your mess, think again." She moved to the door.
She turned just before she left, and smiled at them "But I will be watching
you."

Duncan shut the door behind them. She took his hand, "I know a short cut out
of here." They walked back to Scott's office, she put her arm round his waist,
and leaped out of the broken window.

"You know, Wendy, you're very pretty when you're angry." "Gee, thanks." "No, I
mean, you're pretty all the time, but you're very pretty when you're angry."
"Uh huh." "But by the bones of god, I'd hate to be the target for that, those
guys were practically pissing their pants." "One of them did, actually." "You
weren't acting, were you. That was real." "Damn right it was real, Duncan.
Telling me to bugger off!" "You'd think people would have more sense than to
dis a woman who could tear off their arms without pulling very hard." "Duncan,
you know I couldn't do a thing like that." "I know, and you know. But then, I
couldn't have predicted that move with the water jugs, that was brilliant." "I
just felt like throwing something at him. Hard. And I knew the water wouldn't
actually hurt him. Shock him, yes. But not really hurt." "Brilliant." She
smiled down at him. "You know, you're very pretty when you're angry. But
you're absolutely gorgeous when you smile."

"My strength is your strength. My power is your power. I will love you and
protect you and obey you. Until the end of time."