章節 98: A steep rock face
After Lily showed them most things she knew, she had to answer the obvious questions about how she had the capability.
"I've been launching small satellites into orbit. I'm sure you've seen some of my drone aircraft taking off and landing," Lily told them simply. She wasn't prevaricating, nor was she volunteering precisely how large of a satellite constellation she had, "In doing so, I 'ave also gained control of some existing satellite systems zhat were in orbit. Although the Great War down here was much more even in zhe destruction involved, America won the Great War in space 'andily." That was partly true, too; Dr House had already given her the encryption keys to a number of interesting satellites in orbit in exchange for her promising to stop deorbiting everything she saw.
The PERSEPHONE system was exactly what she thought it was. It was a combination of an automated Moon base and an automated space station, mostly for the purpose of refuelling satellites and mining moon materials. It wasn't much use to me, yet, because apparently, the moon base was only sending reaction mass for use to refuel the fleet of satellites in orbit; however, it was of no use to her at all. The number of gases on the Moon was limited, so what was being sent was oxygen, mined from regolith.
Not only did none of her satellites use hall-like ion thrusters, but oxygen as a reaction mass was totally destructive to all of the materials she built her satellites out of. She was interested to see how Pre-War America built satellites and what materials they used in both the hall thruster to make it oxidation resistant.
She was also curious about what technology was being used to split O2 into ions without the oxygen reforming O2 or just causing oxidation in the storage container, as pure oxygen was incredibly reactive. It was why she couldn't use it in her plasma drives. Theoretically, she could use O2 as a reaction mass because the plasma chamber would ionise it, but there was no way the American satellites had that much energy available. And then, if she used oxygen, it would destroy her satellites very rapidly. It would be like using gasoline that was very acidic in your car. It would work, but it wouldn't do very much good for the life of your car.
It was simpler, at the moment, for her to just replace satellites as they ran out of fuel, which would take about eighteen months for satellites in the lowest orbits. They had to use their thrusters more to counteract air resistance; even if the air was incredibly thin a couple hundred kilometres up, it was still there.
If she or Dr House could get the moon base to start sending a lot of other materials besides oxygen, like aluminium mined from regolith, that would be an exceptional help, but at the moment, neither of them could. Perhaps she would have to send robots up there to investigate it?
She'd like to go herself, but she was a bit leery of space missions. She grew up in space from age ten, and she was aware of how hazardous an environment space was. Transhumanity only survived in space due to the mutual support so many people could provide. Anything that went wrong on a space mission where she was there physically might result in her death. She looked up to the first space explorers, whether they were astronauts, cosmonauts or taikonauts. Yuri Gagarin, Alan Shephard and Yang Liwei were all amazing people, but she didn't want to emulate them! In her opinion, it was a wonder any of them survived!
There was no way she would personally go into space until she had sufficient robotic assets up there to rescue her in the event of catastrophic mission failure.
Both of the Lyons' were a little bit surprised at her declaration but not as shocked as Lily was expecting. Perhaps her face indicated her surprise, although normally, she didn't actually express too much of her opinion or emotions on her face. Or the Elder could have just guessed what she was thinking. Either way, he said, "We suspected something of that nature. No offence, but those improved PipBoy things you've been selling us. You'd have had to guess that it would have been disassembled within fifteen minutes of some of our Scribes getting their hands on it. They can't really help themselves with stuff like that."
Ah, yes. That was true. She had specifically designed and built the LilyPads to be somewhat user-serviceable, as well. Right now, the Maps application was locked down to the areas around DC, so they couldn't have guessed from that. However, she had expected the Brotherhood to have at least a few of them in bits right away. She hummed and considered that, letting the thought process continue, and then she nodded. A thorough examination and testing of the LilyPads would result in the Brotherhood finding out each frequency spectrum the wireless modules inside of it used. The local Mesh used a different frequency block than the satellite link or the "cellular" system, and they'd be able to discover all of them.
In fact, just taking one of the LilyPads outside the immediate area of the DC ruins would give them enough information, as how else would the device still manage a communication link, even if it was degraded and low-bandwidth? She didn't blame them for disassembling and testing the devices. She would do the same thing before she let her soldiers use a communication and computing device manufactured by a third party, even a third party with that she had friendly relationships. She intended to issue them to her citizens first but had been selling most of her productive capacity to the Brotherhood.
"Zhat makes sense, yes. I'm surprised more of them 'aven't been disassembled," she said. Her method for manufacturing traditional computing hardware had far exceeded the Pre-War processors by now. They still weren't very fast, as she thought of things. They had about five hundred megahertz of clock speed for a single processor, or roughly equivalent to commercial processors circa 1998.
However, she had two advantages that made her processors much more effective than that. She could build them fairly small, so, therefore, she could build them very parallel, and her memory technology was better, by far than anything else on the planet. The processor in her LilyPad was a sixteen-core, 500Mhz system with an absolutely ridiculous amount of cache and system RAM, so it was much more effective than what you'd expect for only a five hundred megahertz CPU.
"A lot have. Then carefully reassembled. Most of the Scribes have wanted to requisition two of them, one to hook up to a terminal and one to carry on their arm," he said mildly. Lily nodded. She would be interested in seeing some of the software that they wrote. She included a slightly simplified integrated development environment on every LilyPad, although it was kind of difficult to use unless you hooked it up to a terminal, as they were discussing. It included a number of programming languages, from the main one she used to the ones that were common in Pre-war America, as she had written her own cross-compiler for these languages ages ago.
Perhaps she should build laptops or a desktop PC next? Laptops, probably. Or maybe just wireless keyboard and mouse devices that could connect to the LilyPad.
He then nodded, "Speaking of Scribes, they tell me that your power station is ahead of schedule and might be ready for low-level ignition in the next couple of months. I have to thank you for letting them assist you in building it."
Thank her? It was free, skilled labour. She created the basic design based on the blueprints she received from Dr Li, but she didn't have time to oversee a large construction project. Still, she visited the site often to verify everything was coming along, though. It was true that they were getting a lot of experience that was helping them in their parallel project, which was about four months behind hers, but that was beside the point.
But then she blinked. Why were they distracting her with ancillary information? It was interesting, but she thought there would be more discussions about this chapter in the Mojave. "I expected more... gnashing of teeth, or something, about zhis Chapter in the Mojave."
He nodded, "I'm doing that internally while trying to distract you in order to give me some time to think. When you get to my age, you at least get good at that sort of thing." Lily internally rolled her eyes. She was hundreds of years older than this whippersnapper, and that was a damn lie.
Lily just shrugged and gestured to the two, "You do not 'ave to fill zhe silence with pointless banter, nor do you 'ave to be polite. Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves, or if you need to discuss confidential matters, I can leave zhe room, or you can come back at another time. I don't mind sitting 'ere in companionable silence until you formulate a response."
"I don't think we need to leave and come back, but thank you. Let me think for a moment and discuss this with Sarah if you don't mind," the Elder said, and Lily hummed in reply and shifted to pull up some work she had ready for free moments such as this. There really wasn't enough free time in the day, even if she used the VR pod to get an extra five or six hours here and there -- there was always more to do. Specifically, she was working on something she anticipated that they would both ask of her. It wasn't difficult, merely a slight change to one of the walkie-talkies she had already built, most of it in software, in any event.
It took over five minutes of them having hushed discussions; although she could hear everything they were saying, she avoided paying attention as best as she could. Periodically they would ask her a question, such as her opinion on the battle, how many people escaped, and the like.
Finally, Elder Lyons asked, "Would it be possible for you to fly people to or from that location?"
"Difficult. My aircraft require a fairly long runway in good condition. Vertical take-off and landing is not possible. Request is not feasible until and unless I can get access to a runway in good condition. I could drop off items there, though, literally. Using parachutes," Lily said, giving the Elder her full attention again.
He nodded as if expecting that, "How about assistance in establishing communications with them?"
Lily nodded. That was what she was working on. "Yes, I can 'elp there. Before you leave, I will deliver you a small radio. You can use it to send radio--voice-- to the bunker they have, assuming there is any transceiver on the outside. It will be in the clear, although you can connect whatever cryptographic module in-line before this module so that you can have private communications, zhat part I am not involved in." Although the communications would be encrypted in her network, they would be transmitted in the clear by whatever satellite happened to be over the bunker. Similarly, communications on the same frequency from the bunker would be routed to this device.
The only reason she was assisting them and willing to connect these two chapters was she already knew, from both her observations and Dr House's intelligence network, that eight out of ten Paladins were KIA at the battle at the solar conentrator. Without a doubt, the Paladins had always been the more conservative. Scribes were, on average, much more willing to be open-minded about any number of issues.
She suspected that the DC chapter could absorb such a chapter without being unduly altered by it, especially with Elder Lyons becoming more and more popular, even with the Outcast survivors and the others who stayed but still saw things their way. Although his first priority was still Super Mutants, he had allowed tech scavenging expeditions to resume, so long as they were directed east into the eastern shore of
Maryland and Delaware. There were still, apparently, lots of places to find things there.
The Brotherhood outpost on Kent Island, which used to be the seed vault, was apparently the base of operations for these missions. The Scribes were almost finished repairing the bridge, as well. Lily would have thought that concentrating most of the problematic elements of your organisation on a slightly distant outpost would be a bad idea and an invitation for desertion or mutiny but from what little conversations she has had with Sarah Lyons, that wasn't the case. Even the former Outcasts, about a third of which survived, were singing the praises of Elder Lyons now. Of course, they felt that they should be the ones credited for this, as he only "saw the light" after they left.
Plus, and this was just a suspicion on her part, but the rejuvenation of a number of older members was likely clear to everyone. The subtext was obvious. Immortality, or at least a much longer life, and it was delivered by the Elder's policies. She doubted that she was mentioned much at all, and she wouldn't expect that when dealing with fractious internal politics. You had to grab whatever advantage you could in a situation like that. Lily would think worse of him if he didn't take advantage of it.
Elder Lyons looked like he had asked all he wanted and nodded; however, Sarah asked, "If you were us, with the resources we have, how would you plan a hypothetical expedition to this part of Nevada?"
Well, that was an interesting question. Lily hummed, "Refurbish eight or so Vertibirds to use fusion cores and electric motors instead of gas turbines. Zhe Enclave already has fusion-powered Vertibirds, or so I am told. You are, after all, buying close to a 'undred newly-manufactured fusion cores from me per day." She wondered when they would stop that. They had the right to buy up to thirty-three per cent of her production, and they had been exercising that right since the production facility came online two weeks ago. That reminded her, "Speaking of which, I am running out of boron. I'd like assistance finding locating more. The easiest source is likely Pre-War Abraxo cleaners, which have a significant amount."
Lily still didn't know how the Enclave's larger fusion cores worked. She'd like to disassemble one. Perhaps they were just a casing that contained a half dozen smaller modules and the associated electronics and superconducting wire. If so, she would be really disappointed.
Sarah blinked. But she was getting smarter, she didn't immediately question my idea, assuming they didn't have the capability as she would have done in the past. Instead, she glanced at her dad and slowly nodded, "I'm told that those metal printing devices could produce an electric motor. I'm sure it isn't as easy as just swapping one with the turbines on the existing birds, though. But if we could do it, we could carry one of the fusion core refuelling devices on one of the Vertibirds, though and only stop briefly to refuel."
Lily hummed and nodded, "I doubt you would need to. You'd probably get about twenty hours or more of flight time on one set of fusion cores. It'd be simpler to just carry a box of spares; it wouldn't take that long to fly to Nevada after all. Even with liberal use of superconducting wire, zhe motors would require some additional cooling at low airspeeds. I 'ad been considering water-based cooling and just accepting that you'd have to refill the water tank every so often. I don't know 'ow the Enclave does it, but not zhat way. But I zhink you'd find zhat an electrical motor would require far less maintenance than a gas turbine zhat spins at sixty thousand revolutions per minute. I 'ave been thinking about doing zhe same thing myself, but I don't have any Vertibirds or pilots presently. But such a project is definitely within the scope and capabilities of your Scribes. They'd be able to do it better than I could, too, since they have hundreds of years of experience working on the airframe."
The Elder raised an eyebrow, "We could just fly directly to Nevada if we had that kind of aircraft. I wonder why nobody, me especially, ever considered this option before. It does sound like something we could have done, even before you came along."
Lily gave the man a gimlet eye, "I mean no offence, but your organisation is in many ways more trapped in zhe past than the Enclave is. You almost have a fetish about zhe technology before the Great War, and zhat blinds you in many ways to any development in zhe here and now." She paused before she said precisely what she was thinking, "Zhis will be the death of you if you don't take it into consideration. You just watched it happen."
She pointed to the seventy-five-centimetre display, which Lily had played back some of the battle of the Mojave's chapter. "Your enemy there used simple tactics and an organised military force. Zhey didn't even need lasers or plasma weapons when zhey outnumbered your compatriots twenty to one on an open field with no defensible positions in ten kilometres."
Elder Lyons looked like he bit into a lemon, but he sighed and nodded, "You're right, although I somehow doubt that the leader over there came up through the ranks as a Paladin, but that is just me being hopeful." He nodded, "I understand what you're saying, though. And perhaps I have been less open to research projects proposed by the Scribes than I could have been. This one, though, will be fast-tracked. The Vertibirds we possess are such a force multiplier, but they are limited in range due to us only having one source of fuel. If we could change that, we could utterly change the tempo of our operations."
He paused and then asked, "Do you know anything about the Brotherhood chapters in California?"
"No, I don't. Zhey're all in hiding, from what I can tell. Possibly in their secret places, yes?" she shrugged and continued, "Their war with the NCR has gone about as well as this one battle has, with the exception that the Brotherhood actually hurt the NCR badly by consecutive raids, stealing most of the NCR's ready gold supply that was backing their currency." Honestly, she didn't know what they were thinking when they thought they could win against a somewhat modern polity that had millions of people working behind it. Even Dr House's strategy was just to become too costly to deal with, not actually defeat them.
She specifically did not search them out, despite knowing approximately where the Lost Hills bunker was from playing Fallout 1, although she was curious about the location of the stolen NCR gold. She wouldn't mind minting a few gold coins, but she has no desire to see a bunch of meddlesome old men in California derail the progress she has developed here with Elder Lyons. She had, unfortunately, kind of shot her shot as far as suspicious nuclear explosions and the Brotherhood was concerned. Honestly, she thought the Elder was still slightly suspicious of the fate of the Outcasts, but she couldn't just keep nuking troublesome Brotherhood chapters, especially not their headquarters, and not be discovered.
Sarah glanced at her dad again and shrugged, "Sure beats trying to build an airship."
Elder Lyons stood up, gingerly as if he was still an old man that was in a lot of pain every time he sat down. Then he blinked and realised what he did before chuckling to himself, "Well, thanks for this news, as bad as it is. And for the advice. Perhaps we will be able to do something to help them or evacuate them, though."
---xxxxxx---
Lily had a fairly busy day. The day after her conversation with the Brotherhood Father-Daughter duo, she had received a call from Head Scribe Rothchild, using one of her LilyPads. He had been directed to immediately start converting a prototype Vertibird in order to use fusion power and electrical motors and had an interesting proposition for her.
After they settled on a design, they intended to possibly start full-scale production of new units, not simply settling for a conversion of their existing squadron of Vertibirds. His proposition was she could provide some assistance in exchange for an agreement that the Brotherhood would sell her Vertibirds when the factory came online. A similar relationship that they had with her and her fusion core factory, a right to purchase every third Vertibird that they built.
Lily had nodded. That sounded good, especially since she had to give the Brotherhood a chance to earn back some of their money. They had been buying thousands of fusion cores, and that outlay added up. That's just how economies worked. She couldn't just hoard all the gold they paid her, it wouldn't do any good unless it was moving through the economy. Of course, since that was basically what the Brotherhood had been doing all along, hoarding, it wouldn't particularly make things any worse than they already had been, it just wouldn't make anything better.
She was surprised at the assistance requested though. She assumed that they'd want some electrical motor designs, or assistance with the cooling system but they wanted her help building avionics and flight simulators, rightly assuming that if she was running aircraft as drones she had a healthy avionics package, even if it wasn't designed for human pilots.
Also, that was probably the only part of the aircraft they couldn't build themselves, so it did make some sense when she thought about it. Although, maybe they could build replacements of some of the original Vertibird avionics, but it might be a large project. Lily agreed to it because it wouldn't be that difficult for her.
She could use her existing Autopilot and Attitude-Heading Reference Systems that she designed for her space program without many changes at all. She would just have to design a user interface for them. But, now that she had her apex LCD display technology, she could fashion a very robust glass cockpit system for these new aircraft.
And she already wanted to make flight simulators, and for that, she would require the assistance of trained pilots to test it in all conceivable flight conditions and report back as to the simulator's verisimilitude.
After that call and a new project on her limited amount of time added to her schedule, she was surprised to see the synth woman had returned from the Commonwealth and had requested a meeting with her. Actually, she had gone to the hospital and requested a genetics consult, but Lily suspected that was a ruse.
She hummed and changed the schedule so that she would see her. The Apprentice had almost taken over the day-to-day operations of Custom Tailored Genes, aside from the research and development that she still worked on. That was some of her favourite work; she vastly preferred working on it to the endless traditional engineering projects she had become trapped in like quicksand.
She was almost at the point that she would begin broadcasts using her satellite constellation to many parts of the world. She was beefing up the computer resources dedicated to her impersonator AI, as it would answer all of the calls from random people in random parts of the world. As such, it needed enough comping hardware to have at least a dozen or more forks running simultaneously.
However, she was specifically avoiding broadcasting to areas that were very near her. The state of civilisation around the world was hit or miss. Somewhat surprisingly, one of the top five locations that were doing best was somewhat near her. She judged this by the number of people and the amount of artificial light. A simple test but fairly effective. And north, in former Canada, was Montreal, which had, she estimated, two hundred thousand people and was more or less wholly lit at night. Streets and buildings were in good repair, and the roads leading in and out of the city were in good condition and patrolled by mechanised infantry.
Rather than reassure her that there was civilisation near her, that just made her suspicious. Although the broadcasts wouldn't mention her location, it was possible it could be deduced or inferred. If so, this bastion of civilisation wasn't so far from her. She didn't want to invite them to come to invade Megaton and take everything she had built. Or at least, try anyway. She already had a number of nuclear explosives in orbit, and while they were placed there to protect her orbital assets, they could just as easily be deorbited and fall on a column of trucks carrying soldiers.
But she didn't want to get into a nuke-tossing contest with anyone who was running a modern, clean city with an organised military. If she were such a person, it would have been a strategic imperative to seize some nuclear explosives and delivery systems in order to achieve deterrence against actors like herself, Lily. They might have ICBMs or simply nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, either of which would not be good for her Megaton.
As such, she was leaving them out of the initial tranche of locations she planned to contact. At least until she looked much more unassailable. Looks were what counted when dealing with most humans; she knew that already.
Zipping up the elevator to the basement, she took the stairs up to the ground floor and found the exam room the synth woman was waiting in, surprised to see her not alone. A man was with her in his mid-twenties, wearing a black leather jacket, white t-shirt and black sunglasses. Inside. He looked like he stepped straight off the set to West Side Story or the Michael Jackson music video Beat It.
"Miss Turner, it's nice to see you again," Lily told the woman after she closed the door, glancing at the chart in her hand. They had long ago shifted to digital charts, although each exam room featured an oversized e-reader as a display. It took the doctors a little to get used to, but paper products, aside from toilet paper, were pretty precious and difficult to find. Shifting to a paperless office wasn't just a buzzword; Lily couldn't afford to run a traditional office with as many patients as the hospital now saw.
"Ah, Doctor! Yes. Apologies that I had to depart so soon after I saw you last, but your donation was sorely needed back in the Commonwealth," Lily nodded easily, and glanced at the man, who caused Natalie to cough as if she had forgotten him, "Oh, excuse me. This is Deacon; he's one of the leaders of our little movement. At least, he is one of the few survivors from the last time the Institute found us." The last, she said with a sad tone of voice.
"It is nice to meet you, Mr Deacon," Lily told him, rolling out and sitting on the little stool that is universally present in doctor's offices.
He nodded and said, "I came out personally to thank you. Those weapons have already saved a lot of lives. And also, to warn you."
"Warn me?" Lily asked, arching an eyebrow like Spock. She hadn't used to be able to do such an expression, but her computer could, as it had much finer control of her nerves. As such, she had a program she could run at will to give her the Spock-eyebrow raise.
He nodded, "Yes. You've become notable, even in the Commonwealth now. A trader sold a couple of Auto-Docs in Diamond City that he said he purchased from the Queen of Megaton, and described you in various ways that imply that you're a master of medicine and genetics."
'Hue hue hue. This is the beginning of my popular girl phase, it seems like,' Lily thought to herself, nodding in satisfaction. But then, she paused before saying, "Oh. You suspect zhat zhis so-called Institute will become interested in me."
"Definitely. If you can do half of what the merchants claimed, then they absolutely will. And you're close enough that they might perform operations this far south," Deacon said, hopping up on the exam bed while Natalie sat in the chair, "Although synths outnumber humans in the Institute three or four to one, the actual decision-makers are all humans. And if you can reliably extend a human life significantly, then they will be very interested."
Lily hummed, "Yes, probably. Do you expect zhem to attack me here, zhen?" Sometimes people got accustomed to using force as their first resort.
"Maybe. Probably… not, though. At least, not at first. I expect that they will approach you openly or covertly, somehow, or attempt to replace a few of your people with synths or both. They might elevate that to an attack, though, when you don't do business with them," he said, although the last was a bit unsure.
She shrugged, "Zhen I will just do business with them." She never intended to completely shut out this group that made even the Enclave nervous in the first place.
Natalie looked shocked and gobsmacked, "Huh?! You'd work with those slaver assholes?!" That got her a hard look from Deacon, and she settled down a little.
"Beyond zhe fact that I am responsible for zhis city, and zhis Institute is a secretive and dangerous polity zhat is near my boarders, most of the products I sell I believe should be propagated as widely as possible," Lily told the synth woman, in a calmly angry sort of tone. She wasn't as arrogant as to say she was producing the genetic heritage and legacy of mankind, but that was what she privately believed, even if she didn't say it. Already, she had dropped her prices compared to what the first adopters had paid, and some of the only life-extending treatments were available for free for any Megaton citizen.
She would definitely charge another nation, though. She had sold some of her genetic therapies already in bulk to a small number of merchants if they had the capability to power a refrigeration unit, and she believed them that they would administer them as she directed. Realistically, people hardly needed an actual genetics consult anymore, except for their own curiosity. Her current version of treatments would simply not work if there was incompatible genetics; it no longer would result in possibly dangerous mutations.
"I probably won't sell zhem arms and anything I'd sell zhem I'd give to your group either at a discount or gratis. If you're particularly offended by my stance 'ere, perhaps you could tell me why your group works in the shadows and doesn't take on zhis Institute head-on? Also, I am hopeful zhat these so-called men of science might see reason someday," Lily continued, cold as ice, staring at Natalie the whole time.
Natalie realised that she stuffed her foot into her mouth, "Uhh—well… I guess that makes sense. If we're not willing to fight them directly, it might be a bit hypocritical to assume you would piss them off just for us," she finished with a sigh, slumping into the chair, "I apologise."
Lily nodded, accepting the synth's apology. She didn't approve of what they were doing in a similar way that she didn't approve of the degenerates in Paradise Hills. However, she wasn't about to wage a crusade against the slavers that were next door, much less the ones that were much further away. She'd support a group that wanted to do so, though.
Honestly, it might actually come down to her waging war against Paradise Hills, but they weren't even a tenth of the threat that this highly advanced Institute was. Lily existed on a simple graph -- if she detested what you did and you were of little threat to her, then she might stop you.
Deacon nodded, "I won't say I wouldn't welcome someone doing that, but I definitely understand why you won't. Just the assistance you already have provided, plus what you said you would provide, even if it is in the shadows, is appreciated. What do you mean by seeing reason, though? Stop creating synths? I don't think they'll ever do that."
Lily pursed her lips. "Zhat would be one option. I zhink zhey could accomplish almost all of zheir goals with sub-sapient robotics. But if zhey're set on producing people, zhen zhey should acknowledge synths are people and treat them accordingly." Although she wouldn't say it to these two, she didn't actually have a problem with a period of indentured servitude for AGIs or synths. It was pretty normal for an AGI where she came from to be required to work for the person or company that built them, usually about ten years, but it tended to vary depending on the costs of the AGI's hardware. You still had to pay them, though, in most circumstances. There had to be some sort of pay-off for building an AGI. Otherwise, nobody would do it except for the people who wanted AGI children.
She had personally signed similar contracts back when she was a bio, agreeing to work for a clinic for a decade after she achieved her independence. Wasn't that pretty common? She had her soldiers sign a similar agreement, too.
She shrugged, though, "It makes little difference. I'm not going to offer zhem any ideas because it serves my interests more if zhey have the minimum knowledge and interactions with me."
They discussed a few other things, including Lily telling them about the safe house she had prepared for their group, which both of them appreciated. She told them the location and where she had hidden a key to the front door. It just was a three-bedroom house, renovated, without any kind of active defences or surveillance equipment. Beyond the fact that they might not trust such hardware that wasn't theirs, the point was to blend in.
After that, she administered a number of treatments, including life extension and reflex enhancements, to both synth and humans. She still wasn't able to administer multiple treatments at once, but she had developed a type of pellet that she could inject into a patient's arm. It would dissolve at a set rate, periodically infecting the person with the subsequent treatment. With as many as Deacon ordered, she warned him that he would be feeling vaguely, but not seriously, ill for almost a week.
She gave Natalie the treatments for free, partly because she owed the synth for both giving Lily inspiration through her genome, as well as the "synth part" that was inside her brain. That thing was the basis of the personal computers she had created and had tentatively put on the market, although she wasn't advertising them at all yet. Deacon got an eighty per cent discount. She might have given them to him for free, too, except they had annoyed her with their assumptions.
---xxxxxx---
Lily watched several drones laden with high-explosives kamikaze dive into the small building she had been noticing the zombie people emerge from in Baltimore. She was considering beginning using nuclear strikes because this was the sixth such bombing campaign without seeing any appreciable difference in the number of such people emerging from Baltimore.
She wouldn't call the state of things a war precisely, but it wasn't far off either. Over a hundred suicide combatants emerged from there a week, and considering Baltimore was a notable death zone, she had just begun stationing some men and robots near the outskirts of the city. They'd be fed the location of anybody looking as though they were leaving the city, and they'd just drive up and shoot them from as far away as possible.
It was clear that whoever was responsible had an implausible supply of people and explosives to send against her, to the point where Lily was debating whether or not they could be clones. She had stopped trying to get anywhere near the mindless and murderous people, but she was curious enough that she had modified a number of low-altitude drones to collect tissue samples after her men shot one of them. It'd be interesting if any of the genomes repeat.
If they were a little bit smarter, then they would be a serious, serious threat. More so than the raiders, which had already given both Megaton and the highways she had regularly patrolled a wide berth.
She asked the Brotherhood about any data they had about Baltimore, and Sarah Lyon's just said it was more trouble than it was worth and that she suspected there was some kind of fuckery going on there, that the few times their Paladins had entered it they had gotten swarmed and had to retreat. That wasn't helpful. What Lily wanted to know was anything about who or what was controlling them.
What the hell had Lily ever done to them? Well, she'd fix their wagon, eventually.
Curious, she decided to see if Dr House had some advice for her, "Dr House, what's the best way to build bunker-busting munitions?" The zombie-man that she had seen in some of the memories of the people, a middle-aged man in a lab coat looming over them, had to be based underground. Did Baltimore have a metro system below ground? If so, there might be hundreds or thousands of entrances to it!
The answer was instantaneous, "From what I can tell, the state-of-the-art involved a high-mass missile using fast neutron backscatter technology in the tungsten nose cone to identify a void ahead of the penetrator in order to correctly time the detonation of a medium-yield nuclear explosive to achieve maximum damage to underground structures."
"And how would you know the optimal time to trigger a detonation?" Lily asked curiously.
The animated head of Dr House that was in the corner of my vision sort of shrugged, without having any shoulders animated, "How much do you know of geology and earthquake science?"
"Almost nothing. Which might be kind of concerning considering 'ow many structures I build underground. I just over-engineer everything, zhough," Lily admitted.
He nodded, "Me either. However, sometimes I have found that if sophistication is lacking, an overwhelming force can suffice."
"If I start nuking Baltimore, many questions will be asked—"Lily was interrupted by her Muse sending her a priority alert.
[WARNING: Thermal bloom consistent with ballistic missile launch detected.]
There was an attached longitude and latitude that she quickly pulled up. It was in Nebraska. One of this world's equivalents to the Minuteman silos? It definitely looked like one was launching right now. It was still in its boost phase, but it was already starting to rotate to the east. It could be targeting her, or it could just be trying to achieve orbit in which case it would target pretty much anyone.
It was too close for her to treat it as a joke, so she immediately triggered an alert that would cause a number of air-raid sirens in Megaton to start wailing, along with a quick, "Excuse me, Dr House. I'll talk to you later."
After disconnecting with him, she called Alice and started speaking as soon as the girl answered, "Proceed immediately to at least floor B-15. Someone launched a ballistic missile, which might or might not be aimed at us. If it is aimed at us, you 'ave about five minutes to get to shelter."
Alice gasped, "The gremlins are outside playing. I have to go get them first!"
Lily stopped herself from yelling that she didn't care about them because she did care about them a little bit. Just not anywhere as much as she cared about Alice. Instead, she said firmly, "No. You proceed to safety immediately. Zhey have bodyguards; I'm notifying zhem to grab them and run back here or somewhere safe."
She looked very conflicted but nodded, but then gasped again, "Wait, I have to get Sir Longinus!" With that, she disconnected.
What the fuck, girl?! Lily hissed and called Sarah Lyons. The Elder didn't actually have one of her LilyPads yet, or perhaps he'd never get one. She answered after a couple of rings, "What's up, Doc?" Someone had been watching the Bugs Bunny cartoons that were in the Megaton Library, clearly.
Madison Li had arranged a real-time communications channel, but it pre-dated her space program. It was a low-speed digital radio link that could be used for text messages and e-mail. As she was talking to Sarah, she sent a text message, flagged as highly urgent, with the same information.
"A ballistic missile launch has been detected in Nebraska, it is turning east. I don't know if it is targeting DC; it's still in the boost phase. I should know if it is us within a hundred and eighty seconds," Lily said emotionlessly.
"Well, fuck," the woman said and disconnected immediately.
As the seconds ticked by, Lily wondered just how many nuclear bombs America had and didn't end up using in the Great War. She supposed it was a silly question when you could find mini-nukes in a janitor's closet in the game, but it was something she desperately wanted to know now.
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