In loco regimentum

As she watched Jeeves slowly float over to her, she, for the third time in as many days, felt a little sad that she couldn't easily change the name of the Mister Handy after she reverted him to factory default settings. Still, it could have been worse. It was set on "Jeeves," which, combined with his heavy British accent, made Lily vow to include a graphic of a little bow tie on his chassis when she got around to replacing it with a more robust one, as she had done for Sophie.

"Ah, yes, madam, I have finished conducting the preliminary tests on, ahem, Project Firestarter items Aleph-Three, Bet, Gimel, and Dalet-Six. Aleph-One and Gimel have passed the tests while, unfortunately, Bet and Dalet-Six have failed," he said in a soothing British accent, like most Mister Handy's, although it took a little while for him to get used to the Hebrew phonetic alphabet that was most commonly used for iteratively counting in space instead of the standard American one. In her past life in space, when using English, the American or NATO phonetic alphabet was only used for spelling words, while the Hebrew phonetic alphabet was commonly used for everything else. She wasn't entirely sure why that was, but it was a habit that was ingrained and difficult to break now.

When she had told Gary about her new Mister Handy he had told her that although the British accent versions were the most popular, they were not universal and about how after his wife divorced him, the only model he could afford was a used Mister Handy featuring the least desirable German accent. Honestly, Lily would really have liked to have heard that, 'Nein, nein, nein!'

Jeeves also had a bunch of optional software packages and seemed especially designed to be an assistant to scientific research or a laboratory. According to Jeeves' bragging, the software itself cost over ten times as much as a standard Mister Handy did, as it was so specialised. While backing up his pre-wipe memories for perusal, she had also carefully bypassed the General Atomics copy protection and downloaded all of his available skill packs, which were contained in a special memory module slotted into one of his peripheral slots, and figured she would make a gift of them to Sophie. She knew that the girl would get a kick out of actually being able to assist Scott in his workshop on projects.

"Zhank you, Jeeves. I will review zhe failure and queue up another testing procedure, in good time," Lily told the robot, appreciatively.

Lily noticed that the butler skill pack sometimes took priority, as he would refuse to take thanks from her, his principal. Instead, he replied, "It was a team effort, ma'am." He also wouldn't leave without being dismissed, as he asked, "Would there be something more, ma'am?"

Lily waved a hand, "Not right now, zhank you." That caused him to float off to handle some other matter. Lily had to admit she had made a mistake not bringing him online immediately after she got back because he had proved incredibly useful for the past week.

Project Firestarter was her e-reader, as she didn't have the guts to call it a Kindle, as she wasn't sure Jeff Bezos didn't have the capability to reach out through space, time and the multiverse to smite her for a copyright violation.

Sub-project Aleph-Three was the actual computer infrastructure, processor, memory and motherboard, which meant she had a working variant of the device's internals after two failed attempts at integrating all of the components. Gimel was the machine to manufacture the simple sapphire glass screens, which would rest on top of the e-ink displays that she still had not solved. She was pleased that two important things were already solved on this project.

However, the failures in Bet meant she would have to redesign the housing, which was currently aluminum. She had made the testing requirements very rigorous since children would be using these devices. They would have to survive basically everything a child could throw at them. One of the pending tests, waiting for once she got a completed device fully incorporated, would be throwing it at a cement floor with the maximum force a tween could exert. Clearly, she was a ways away from reaching that if it was already failing minor drop tests with an installed motherboard.

The other failure was the more sophisticated micro-capsules manufacturing system, which wasn't surprising. These would be the pixels on display, and she had to manufacture them in incredible quantities. A single e-reader device used a little less than two million of them. Only one of the sapphire manufacturing technologies she got from the Brotherhood could handle these very small shapes at such speeds, and adding a step in the middle of the manufacturing process to fill it with oil and pigments was finicky.

The giant machine theoretically had the capability to manufacture more than four million microcapsules per hour if her notes from the Brotherhood were to be believed. Still, she had already had to rebuild parts of it twice after it more or less self-destructed in unanticipated catastrophic failure modes. What did the rocket bro call it when his rockets exploded? Rapid unscheduled disassembly? It did that.

Still, looking over the test failure report, the problems seemed much smaller this time than last night's attempted test run. She spent most of the early morning hours repairing the stupid thing. Once she got it running, she was going to disassemble it one final time for transport to the small warehouse a block and a half away that she owned and would be used as a factory of sorts, at least until her own first few sub-basement levels were anything more than her fantasy. She had already hired Tombs' men to clean it from top to bottom, which they had been working on for several days.

She lifted her head as she felt a new node connect to her network. Not too long after that, she got a mental alert of a number of e-mail messages, followed by the node dropping off her network. Intrigued, she opened her inbox to discover they were all from Scott and Sophie.

The first was from Sophie, indicating that they were alright and doing fine, as well as a long-winded but sweet personal recount of what they had been up to. She set that aside for a moment to read Scott's much more concise messages.

The first requested that she realign her dish to point at Scott's old electronics store, which he attached the coordinates to as if she didn't already know and told her not to expect a subsequent connection for several days. She supposed that was the first node in whatever paranoid relay scheme he was concocting. Perhaps he was keeping up appearances that his old home was still occupied. Maybe installed an intercom at the door with a buzzer that would forward to the Vault so he could yell at solicitors. Fair enough, she would go up onto the roof after it stopped snowing.

The second message simply stated that she could expect about 56 kilowatts out of it and featured attached files that were a set of complete images and CAD blueprints for the generator, attachments, accessories and controls to convert one of the fission motors into an electrical generator. Ah, she could make Dr Bonesaw that generator, now. Although Lily intended to go through the design and adjust it so she could build the generator using her carbon fabricator, it seemed straightforward. She was glad she didn't have to spend the time to make up the design herself. She wondered if he had made blueprints of the device in the past and fed them through the CAD system or if he patiently entered all the data himself.

The last featured a number of ideas and attached files about the truck project, some of which would work well also on her armoured research vehicle conversion, which she was working on in parallel. She was pleased he was providing so much help on this project since he basically implied he would be building these things to sell himself.

There were two ideas about how to utilise two fission motors on a single vehicle. The first one was to use a differential gear to connect two disparate power sources into a single power shaft, which would then connect to the centre differential of the truck and then to the wheels as usual. This would have the two fission motors both sitting in the front of the truck in a traditional design with their output shafts pointed at each other.

The second would be for one motor to run each group of axles. The truck she was designing would probably have eight wheels and was split into a front four and back four design. The motors would still be next to each other, but in the centre of the vehicle, with one's power shaft pointing forward and the other's to the rear.

It kind of reminded her how the Tesla Model S Dual Motor was built, except her motors were a lot bigger.

There were plusses and cons to both designs; for example, the first was mechanically more complicated with one extra differential gear, which might fail, but engineering development perspective, it was a lot simpler and didn't break any new ground. She hadn't heard of a truck that had its engines located in the centre of it, for example. The second would have a better centre of gravity and likely slightly better effective torque available at the wheels.

Lily hummed while rapping her fingers on her work table. She was attempting to use as many elements as possible on the truck design in her armoured RV, as well. And her armoured RV would feature that giant overpowered single engine. Therefore it made sense to go with the first design as that was the design that was most similar to what a vehicle would look like if it just had one engine.

Plus, simple solutions reduced development time radically, and time was one of her most important resources. That was vitally important on this project, as it was away from her fields of expertise which already applied an effective multiplier on the time and effort required for successful completion.

Lily nodded. More traditional design with a differential it is, then. She made a couple of mental notes and imported the differential gear design into her CAD system, and associated it with the truck project.

---xxxxxx---

Three days later, she had a meeting with the Mayor in her office, as she generally politely declined invitations to go anywhere else. She was too busy to waste half of a day on such frivolities.

The Mayor, Bill Cunningham, was a gregarious man. She couldn't quite place his ethnicity, as he appeared to be the result of a half dozen national and regional origins thrown in a blender. He was a man in his thirties and had a skin tone of light caramel, yet he featured a very slight epicanthal fold to his eyes and Mediterranean facial features. All in all, it was quite a pleasant combination aesthetically, she thought. It was a shame, then, that he was such an asshole.

He spent most of the meeting, as was his custom when speaking with her, peering down into her top to peek at her décolletage. She consistently and specifically wore tasteful but low-cut tops to meetings with him especially to give him this opportunity because it had been her general experience that the exposure to boob flesh impaired most men's decision-making ability, and Mayor Cunningham specifically was a paragon of that vice.

Like most politicians, he came to her in order to, and in equal parts, beg her, threaten her and then screw her over, all while remaining quite polite.

At first, he wanted to discuss the possibility of merging her and Tombs' company, Eastside Water & Power, with the municipal utility company, effectively buying out her interest in it with caps and gold. She had rolled her eyes at that. Beyond the fact that it was highly inappropriate to discuss the matter without her partner, she had no interest in doing so.

The company had barely begun paying off all of the capital expenditures involved in refurbishing the neighbourhood electrical substation and all of the power lines, to say nothing about the water lines and septic. Their cash flow was increasing, but they didn't expect to reach a breakeven point for about seven to eight months after electrical service began to be billed.

That was a ridiculously short amortisation period, all things considered, and any MBA worth her salt would tell her that she would be an insane person to sell such a potentially profitable enterprise, especially in an economy that was even more imaginary than the one she remembered on the Earth of her origin.

A fact that many people never discovered in their lives was that money and power were two vastly different things. Money was only an analogue, a facsimile of power. The true elites that she recalled from both of her lives, herself being one of them, even if only in the lowest of tiers, generally discounted mere wealth.

Although the currency system was a bit different in space, and credits weren't easily converted into dollars of an entirely different world, Lily used to be considered a billionaire by any metric, if a small one. Yet, how much actual money or currency did she have in her bank accounts at any one time? Almost none!

In Lily's past life, she owned assets. She had a relationship with a bank that was more than happy to open her a line of credit that she could spend like it was money, backed by a number of assets such as commodities on account or shares in profitable ventures. If she needed to make a big purchase, she simply did so, and the bank would convert some of her assets in order to pay the line of credit.

Rich people had money, but the truly wealthy and powerful almost universally did not. Instead, they had assets. And it would be incredibly foolish to compromise such a promising asset as a company that provided clean water and power in exchange for mere lucre. Wealth always followed power around like a lovesick puppy anyway, so long as she had one, the other would invariably follow.

Granted, it was slightly different in this world as there were no banks, but being bought off with a literal bag full of soda bottlecaps, which had no intrinsic value, would have her play the role of native to his pilgrim, which wasn't something she was interested in. Although, now that she thought about it, the story of buying the island of Manhatten for a bag of glass beads was very likely to be apocryphal. After all, it was more likely they didn't give any of the tribes of people living nearby anything at all.

After that, he inquired as to the possibility of a joint venture to install one of her generators on the west side in order to alleviate the rolling blackouts that Megaton still periodically experienced on a weekly basis. That was the request he should have started with, as it was reasonable.

To that, she had responded positively, leaning forward on her desk slightly to give him a better look, but informed him that it would have to be structured as a venture between her existing company, as she had agreed in the partnership agreement with Tombs not to compete with their company through any additional ventures. The Mayor looked like he bit into a lemon at that.

It seemed he hated Tombs, which was probably wise because it was undoubtedly reciprocal, and the Mayor now decided to punish her for that relationship. His last item was informing her that the official resolution that the Eastside of Megaton be considered an up-and-coming district came with obligations to herself as the number one taxpayer and employer.

Specifically, the Megaton city council had decreed that the primary gate into and out of Megaton was being overworked, and a second gate should be constructed on the east side of town. It was almost feudal, but as the biggest employer, she was now responsible for both constructing it, and manning it with her own security guards, which would be putatively under the Sheriff's command, but that she would have to pay for.

"Entirely at my own expense? Zhat doesn't seem very reasonable, Mayor Cunningham," she said demurely, fluttering her eyelashes.

This caused him to laugh affably, "Oh, no, of course not! As you would be, in effect, acting in loco regimentum, you would be in effect acting as the government of Megaton, as such, there are funds set aside for both the construction and maintenance of this new gate. Generally speaking, a consortium of the businesses around would be responsible, but basically, you're it. Perhaps later, the city council can reassess the responsibilities as more productive businesses move into the area."

Ah, she got it now. She was sure that these funds set aside for her would not be adequate in any capacity; that was how he was getting back at her. And they would also have to be accounted for carefully, lest she be accused of conversion or embezzlement. And the carrot was that if she played ball, he would bring others in to share or take up more of the burden, likely one of his own enterprises.

She sighed theatrically, trying to act put upon, "Well, very well. If you could forward to my office as soon as possible zhe requirements the city has as far as to zhe new gate, size, operating 'ours, et cetera and deliver the construction funds, I will see about meeting zhese obligations."

Internally she was pleased, and she tried not to show it. She had lived on the ancap Extropia Station where even the courts and judicial systems were private, for-profit businesses, so she wasn't unfamiliar with the concept of privatising government functions. She wasn't as philosophically radical as most people who lived in that place; it was just one of the only places she could live. So, while she might not necessarily philosophically agree with the concept of privatising the police in all instances, there was one instance that she was absolutely for it -- if she controlled them!

This ass thought he was doing her dirty, but he opened the door to her legitimately wielding the power of government, which was the power of unfettered and unlimited violence, all at her say so. Her gate security guards might technically be under the command of the Sheriff, but she would pay, train and outfit them. They would know which side of their bread was buttered on.

The Mayor seemed quite intelligent in some ways but kind of silly in others. There was a reason modern governments didn't generally allow private paramilitary forces to exercise any kind of legitimate governmental functions. Because it kind of muddied the water as to who was really the government and provided them legitimacy.

All Lily would have to do would be to pay for a few extra guards on her own dime and have them patrol the neighbourhood, and it would be a defacto police force. That would get the perennially underfunded and undermanned Sheriff on her side better than anything else, as all he really wanted to do was keep the streets safe.

Hell, in two years, by the time the Lone Wanderer left Vault 111, the first town he or she visited might be named Liliton!

The Mayor seemed a bit confused that she hadn't given up or haggled at all, but from his perspective, it was a win-win as he was either getting a piece of her company or getting a brand new gate for the city, so he didn't push matters.

After a bit more small talk, he and his assistant left her office, much to her delight. That man's strength was her weakness, and even with using her feminine charms liberally, she felt that speaking to him was incredibly fatiguing.

It looks like she would have to accelerate her plans for a little mercenary outfit. Tombs didn't want to get involved, except as a potential customer, as he considered that he might re-enter politics and felt it was better to be not considered a warlord. She thought that was stupid, but didn't correct him because she didn't really want him involved. In her opinion, being a warlord first was the best way to enter politics, because then everyone knows you're not fucking about.

She had discussed starting a PMC with Grace a number of times before the woman departed on a mission that might last a couple of weeks. At first, Lily felt it might not be the best pillow talk, but Grace seemed all for it, and she had gotten a lot of useful advice.

Lily didn't want any of the former Enclave members to be directly involved because she intended this to be, essentially, her private Army, and she did not want to put them in a position where they might consider themselves to have a conflict of interest. She felt that their loyalty was still primarily to Miller and to their fellow exiles, and she could respect that.

That left her in a bit of a tough spot. Grace told her that unless she wanted to command the day-to-day operations, and she did not, her most important step was finding a leadership team she could trust.

She had asked Gary if he was interested in working part-time in such a venture, and he was very hesitant to agree to work as a mercenary, especially since his prospects were so good already, but that he would be willing to offer training, boot camp style. That would be useful, and was a start for her on building a cadre, but there was another service Lily wanted to buy from him.

She found him in class with twelve children. It wasn't hard to find ten other children of approximately the same age when she offered free education, and the Apprentice's siblings seemed to be doing very well in the social environment compared to being alone most of the time. Friends were made, almost all of which were children of other employees of hers.

She wasn't in a hurry, so she worked on one of her projects virtually while he finished his lesson, which took about twenty minutes. As the kids streamed out of class, she walked in.

Gary smiled when he saw her, but then his eyes dropped down to her chest and stayed there, "Woah..." he said.

Lily rolled her eyes a little. It wasn't as if he hadn't seen much more than that already. But an excellent low-cut top would do that, even if one had already seen the goods. It was the distinction between accentuating while concealing and simply revealing.

Finally, his eyes raised back to her face, and he gave himself a little shake of the head as if to clear it, "I'd like to offer you another job."

That caused him to grin, "Again? You've already tried mercenary last time; you know if you said pirate, I might have gone for it."

Lily chuckled, and she shook her head, "No. I'd like to hire you to interview potential employees, mercenary officers. I want you to use your special abilities to tell me if zhey're likely to be complete psychos, terrible people or likely to betray me."

That caused him to raise his eyebrows and glance around slightly to make sure nobody was around, "Huh, you know it isn't exactly one hundred per cent, right?"

Lily nodded, "Yes, but I feel very confident zhat you can identify more or less trustworthy people as well as complete monsters."

Gary nodded, "Well, I 'spose you're right. Alright, I can do that."

Lily smiled, "Excellent! I don't have any applicants yet, but I wanted to make sure you were on board, first." She then paused, "Oh, and I zhink maybe one more week and I will 'ave somezhing of a replacement for zhe books you mentioned before."

Without giving him anything else to go on, she sashayed back out of the conference room he was using as a classroom, humming.