Capítulo 28: All according to Keikaku
Lily smiled when she saw Grace upstairs, dwarfing over the Apprentice in their small but clean conference room.
She said in a friendly yet teasing tone, "Hey, Girlie. You're looking like a bigshot now! Have minions, a huge building that doesn't even look like a wreck, the whole shebang!"
"Yes, my plans for global domination are proceeding apace. All according to keikaku," Lily said smugly.
"Keikaku?" asked the taller woman.
Lily loved it when she could unleash her popular culture references, even if she was the only one to appreciate them, "Translator notes indicate it means to plan."
Alice glanced between the two of them, not quite suspiciously but interestedly. Her teacher was rarely so friendly with, well, anyone. She always had the mask of friendliness, even with the most frustrating of patients, but it was always just that, a mask.
Grace had the feeling she was being made fun of somehow by Lily but couldn't figure out how, so she ignored it, "There was a message posted that you wanted to see me? Which is a coincidence; I wanted to see you too!"
Lily blushed faintly for a moment before she asked, "You did?"
Alice, who, as teenaged girls often were, was hyperaware of potential romance within a fifty-meter radius around her, snapped to attention on Lily's face like a heat-seeking missile, eyes narrowing. Then her lips started twitching upwards as if trying to prevent herself from grinning. She coughed and said, "Dr St. Claire, I'll go get the tea service if you'd like to discuss your... business with your guest."
With that, Alice ducked out of the room, but Lily's peak human senses heard at least one giggle from the girl on the other side of the door.
"Yep, I had two things..." and with that, Grace trailed off, giving Lily a quite blatant elevator-eye appraisal, pausing meaningfully at the doctor's thighs, hips and chest before correcting herself, "... well, three things that I wanted to see you about. I'm not sure that girl thinks we have actual legitimate business to talk about, though."
Grace then grinned wickedly, "Suppose we surprise her by actually be discussing business when she gets back?... or maybe lean into what she's expecting, and I can see how tousled I can get you in a few minutes."
Lily coughed lightly, "I've already 'ad the dragon and the phoenix discussion with 'er for biology studies; I'd rather not 'ave the phoenix and phoenix discussion just yet. Or ever. Some zhings she can find out on her own."
Grace chuckled, "You know, you have really odd sayings, you know that? But I think I know what you mean." She stood until Lily took a seat at the table and then sat next to her, "I take it phoenixes are female, for some reason?"
Lily nodded, "Hn... yes, although you don't have any of the cultural referents as to why," and she said the next word with perfect Mandarin tonal pronunciation, "fènghuáng might be considered full of yin. Let's just say the birds and the bees; I often forget where I am sometimes when I get flustered, you see."
Grace's eyebrows raised considerably at the foreign word, but Alice came back into the room suddenly with the platter with a tea service on it, glancing between Lily and Grace suspiciously, then looking clearly disappointed. She gently sat the tea service down in front of Lily as the hostess, bowed as she was taught and backed out of the room.
While Lily was by no means a tea artist, if over three hundred years you repeat an action a couple of times a week, even or perhaps especially if it is in a robotic body, you will tend to look like an expert at it to those who don't know any better.
Lily warned, "This isn't actually tea, but I've discovered that the leaves of the shrub that produce mutafruit actually produce a fair imitation of an Oolong or maybe even a red tea, perhaps. I'm afraid I don't have any 'oney, though."
Grace was grinning at her and accepted the teacup, which was a simple and small bowl, "You know, Girlie, it is a little weird for me to ask this of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Nordic bombshell, but... uhh... are you Chinese?"
Lily winced. How does one say that the better parts of your memories were? This wasn't a question that lent itself to the answer "Sort of," so she decided to go with, "It's complic--"
Grace interrupted her with a manic, "A deep cover sleeper agent honeypot, trained to wring secrets from an unsuspecting soldier after you've exhausted her in the bedroom! Now your sexy accent makes perfect sense!"
Lily stared blankly at her, in shock, as Grace continued enthusiastically, "Oh, I have so many secrets, comrade! Wring them from me! RE-EDUCATE ME!!"
Was she being teased, or had she just stumbled across one of Grace's fetishes? From the grin on the other woman's face, Lily decided that while it might be a little of both, it was clearly mostly her being teased, so she decided to pout. She enjoyed being the one to verbally win in teasing matches, not being hoisted on her own petard.
This caused Grace to grin even wider, so Lily sniffed delicately and lifted her teacup to her lips to sip, "Your mutafruit tea will go cold."
"Oh, yes, yes, of course," replied Grace evenly, taking an immodest gulp like a barbarian. She paused, "This is actually not bad."
Lily smiled appreciatively, "Thank you. I suppose I'll discuss some of my business first; then you can go?" At Grace's nod, Lily laid out the sheets of paper on the table, "I scavenged in a nearby hôpital, which still had a fair amount of useful technology. I want to 'ire your team of four ne'er-do-wells--"
Grace interrupted her, "Six! There are six of us now! An old comrade of mine and New John's older sister are working for me now, too." She stressed the word comrade with a jaunty wag of her eyebrows.
Lily grinned, "Wow, keep accumulating more minions, and they'll have to start calling you ma'am soon!"
Grace snorted, already looking at the maps and diagrams and lists of items on the paper. She didn't even raise her head from them to raise her objection, "As if I'd ever be an officer, Girlie. Plus, combat arms officers should be referred to as sir regardless of sex. Do you take me for some staff puke?! Remember what happened the last time you called me, ma'am? Are you angling for another spanking?"
Lily blinked. She was, actually. She definitely was, but she hadn't intended to with that statement. That was certainly different from the Army she remembered in America, where sirs were men, and ma'ams were women, full stop.
She recalled Grace's antipathy towards anyone wearing power armour and realized that was quite different from the standard Brotherhood doctrine and rank structure, too.
Lily was starting to get the feeling that Grace might be away without proper leave, and for some time, from President Eden's infantry forces. If so, Lily couldn't really blame her. Lily would have deserted from the Enclave at the first opportunity, too.
She couldn't help herself, though, and said with eyes glittering misbehaviour, "Ma'am, ma'am, ma'am..."
"I'm counting, don't worry..." Grace replied, then started humming. "This is a lot of heavy things. We'll need to hire a truck for sure. Why does this say the top floor is out of bounds?"
Deciding that there was enough flirting for the moment, Lily got down to business, too, "Because it is a death trap. I barely made it out alive. I was stupid and triggered some contingency, and now that floor is crawling with over twenty floating eyebots, each armed with a laser. I barely survived running past two, and had to kick out a window and throw myself out of it, four floors high, to survive."
Grace gave her another appraising look; this time, it wasn't sexual at all. She nodded and said approvingly, "Badass."
Then she asked, "They're contained on the top floor, though?"
Lily nodded, "Yes, and the top floor is locked with a pretty difficult code lock. Zhey were doing military research up there, sort of. Cybernetics, which is actually right up my alley. I managed to cart off a bunch of a working model of an implanted 'ealing system called... amusingly enough... the phoenix system. It can be implanted in boys, too, though, even though it is full of yin."
Grace's eyebrows went up again as if she recognized it, "Really badass. And you have an Auto-Doc with the program to install them? Are you planning on selling these, cuz we'd might be interested in them."
Lily tapped the diagram of the Auto-Doc, which was listed as priority #2 to loot, "I do intend to sell them, but I'm not sure the price point yet. I will have an Auto-Doc soon, but I actually don't need one to do the surgery for a device as simple as this. It's really just plug-and-play with your cardiovascular system."
Lily considered offering one as payment for the job, but she had been planning on pricing them at about four to five thousand caps a piece, which was definitely more than she was willing to pay for this job, but at the same time, she'd keep her liquid caps which was more important to her now. Lily didn't know the financial status of Grace's Grenadiers, although they probably made a killing on the kilos and kilos of drugs they sold.
Grace nodded, as if to consider it. Then she looked up, "Okay, Girlie. We're definitely interested. Only issue is that this is a multi-day job for sure, and we're still finishing up our last one -- that was one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. I was wondering if you could act as an in-between for me, see if that friend of yours who lent you that crazy robot was interested in some of the goods we've got from our last job."
It was Lily's turn for her eyes to rise to her scalp. Did she want to talk to the Mechanist to sell him something? Presumably something robotic? Did Grace not know she liked robots, also?
Lily hummed, "You want to sell 'im something? That isn't easily liquidated but is related to his interest in robotics? Most robots are easily liquidated, yes? So it has to be ... non-functional ones. Even most non-functional robots you could find buyers for here in Megaton. What do you got, ma'am?"
Grace raised four fingers at her, to indicate that she was still counting, "Right you are. We hit an old warehouse and discovered almost two dozen robots in various stages of brokenness. They look like Protectrons but don't have any weapons at all; our contact here in Megaton said this model was kind of difficult to sell for that reason. They're not for protection but for things like mopping the floors or moving boxes from one part of a warehouse to the other. But he said you needed a lot of computer infrastructure to really make use of them, so he didn't want to buy them. Without a mainframe, they often just run into walls if you tell them to do things."
Lily's eyebrows raised considerably, "Firstly... I am now your contact for offloading robotics parts. If I can't use zhem myself, I will definitely find a buyer on consignment. Zhese, I want all of them myself. 'ave to be Servitrons or Labourtrons. Essentially the same model as a Protectron, just in a chassis that is not armoured, and quite fragile actually, and of course no weapons."
Lily tapped her fingers on the conference room table. They had the same internals as a Protectron, the same motivators and processors, except they didn't have the independent combat software or any weapons. Dr House was really quite fond of a single multi-role robotics platform serving many different functions, and the Tron series of bipedal robots demonstrated this the most.
Lily could definitely flash their processors with a fork from one of her existing Protectrons, and even armour their chassis considerably, but the lack of weapons would make them unsuited for any defensive tasks, 'I don't care! I want them! Every hospital has to have orderlies, right? Mine will be robots!'
Lily understood why Grace wasn't willing to take on a new job that would take her far away from Megaton now, though. Even though they were proving difficult to liquidate, all these robots were still valuable. Her team was guarding them until they got rid of them.
Lily hummed, "'ow much are you trying to get for zhese Labourtrons, Grace?"
Grace smiled, "I was hoping to get five hundred per on any of the batch that could be rebuilt."
Lily rolled her eyes. An unarmed, unarmoured Labourtron or Servitron was probably worth that or perhaps a little more in operating condition. Lily would pay five hundred for a broken Protectron, but not for this. If they were the special construction and demolition model, the Constructron, Lily would pay over a thousand just for a broken model. Those had special hardware and special software modules that allowed them to function with little supervision on a job site, doing things as varied as electrical work, plumbing and drywall.
Lily haggled, "Zhat's way too much. Zhat's how much a working model would go for, and zhat's if you sell them one at a time. Who would be willing to buy maybe twenty at a time but moi?"
"Yeah, but they come with ten charging stations! We had to hire a flatbed to drag all this junk off to town," Grace groused.
They continued going back and forth for a time before Lily stopped her, "How about a trade in-kind? You said you were interested in the Phoenix implants. I can give you four of those, plus I'll throw in a reflex augmentation treatment for all six of you for free."
Both testing cohorts had completed the entire protocol, with the reflex augmentation increasing ones reflexes on average 95% compared to baseline, with a reduction in the endurance of only 2.5% -- which Lily couldn't even be confident was statistically significant with an n-value of only ten subjects.
No health items had popped up on either the reflex or the clean metabolism mods, and even though, for any civilized society, much more testing would have been warranted, Lily was willing to tentatively put both of them on the market. She was going to charge 1,000 to 1,500 caps for the reflex mod and 500 for the metabolism mod.
The lesser price for the latter mod was her version of charity on the olfactory senses of everyone in Megaton. She would give it away, but nobody valued things they got for free.
If Grace's Grenadiers became the launch customers for the reflex mod, perhaps the ladies of the Pink Slipper could become the launch customers for the clean metabolism mod?
Grace looked interested, "Reflex augmentation? It makes you faster? How much faster, how long does it last, and what are the drawbacks? And it's safe?"
Lily smiled. People that were intelligent enough to realize that this was a world full of trade-offs made her happy, especially if she was sleeping with them. "Yes. On average, it will make the average person almost 100% faster. It lasts forever... well, as you start getting older, your reflexes will naturally slide -- but you'd still be faster than your average granny, no? And, it does very slightly reduce the stamina of the person treated. However, my tests could only determine a two-and-a-'alf per cent decrease. I expected about a five per cent, though. And yes, it is safe, I believe. My Apprentice, the girl who gave us the tea, took zhe treatment earlier today."
Grace stared at Lily, "But you haven't? Why?"
Lily scowled, "I wish I could. But, it increases your reflexes only up to a certain point. If you already have peak 'uman reflexes, you won't gain anything out of it. I don't zhink any of your team have that, but we can test you beforehand and give you an idea of how much it would help you in theory."
Grace frowned, "Did you just humble brag? ... This sounds good, actually. Things that make us safer, increase our potential are worth more than mere caps. Only, theres six of us. I can't just buy four of the healing devices and tell the two new guys they're shit out of luck!"
Lily pointed to the sheets of paper, "Do zhe 'ospital job. I'll pay your expenses, but your payment will be another phoenix device. And zhen I have one more job after zhat which will actually be quite a lot simpler and hopefully quick, same thing."
"Bitch, you just fucking jinxed us to a total clusterfuck on that one, now," the mercenary groused irritatedly.
Lily considered that. She was a Staff Sergeant in the service, so it wasn't like she didn't know exactly what Grace meant. You didn't become an NCO without a healthy dose of superstition. It was somewhat universal. She decided she'd just own up to it, "Sorry."
Grace grumbled, "What's the second job?"
Lily smiled brightly, "Bodyguard duties while I disassemble and make safe the nuclear bomb that is in the centre of town."
Grace suddenly looked infuriated, "Uhhh... they said that fucking thing was ALREADY safe. They assured me of that a decade ago when I came to this fucking shithole. Are you telling me that one, that is a live bomb and two, that you can disarm it without it exploding, right? Right?"
Lily smiled and nodded, "Yes, and yes. It's definitely a live bomb, and although it hasn't been activated with the proper codes, it would still be possible to detonate it in theory. A fusion pulse charge would do it, for example." Lily mentioned that because she knew that was how it was done in the Tenpenny Tower quest, despite not knowing from Adam what a Fusion Pulse Charge actually was.
She then continued, "I have the full diagrams of its internal structure for this model of explosive and am one hundred per cent confident in disarming it. Not only will I need to disable the detonation circuit, which is easy, but I think it might be prudent to either remove the fission kernel entirely or, at the minimum, poison it so a full-order detonation would be impossible."
Lily planned, initially, to just disable the detonation circuits until she thought about how the Tenpenny Tower quest in Fallout 3 detonated the bomb. She had no idea what a Fusion Pulse Charge was besides a game MacGuffin, but it kind of sounded like something that might tend to bypass the detonation circuit itself and act on the fission bomb kernel itself, so she needed to solve that issue, too.
Grace calmed down a little bit, but not by much, "Fuck! Okay, yes. We're doing that. If you hadn't already offered to pay us, I'd help you with this for free... but you have to meet our new guy. My old friend and comrade. He was a demolitions expert with me in... err, another lifetime ago, and it would make me feel a lot better if you two handled this problem together. He just assumed the nuke was for show, too. Fucking hell!"
That would make Lily feel a lot better, too, actually, so she just nodded. She would have to print off the scans from her scanner, but she had already found out how to add the Fallout universe dot-matrix printers as a peripheral with a cord to her computer.
She extended her head to shake, "Deal, ma'am!"
"That's five!"
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