Like it or lump it

Lily didn't have all the data on the ICBM, but she did have a fair bit. She had some publicised data about the general specifications, propaganda basically, as well as the complete data on its first-stage booster, which was also used to loft satellites into orbit. It wasn't the best vehicle they had for such purposes, so she felt it was likely used due to political reasons. Likely, something along the lines of: "We can't shut down the assembly line; think of all the jobs and profit we will lose!" Fundamentally, there was no way a solid-stage rocket booster would be competitive with traditional rockets in a commercial venture. To say nothing about the REPCONN rockets, which were even better than that.

Really, there was no way anything could compare to the specific impulse they supposedly had on the REPCONN rocket orbital system. She didn't know how it worked, but at first, she suspected antimatter because it was already being produced industrially. However, the publicly available information about REPCONN said they researched alternative fuels, including fission and fusion fuels. Maybe a fusion torch rocket, then, like her plasma drives, but much larger?

REPCONN had to have been the contractor that lifted the giant space station to orbit in parts, as well as all of the equipment for their Moon base. It made her want to make a visit to their headquarters, which was near Las Vegas, someday.

However, even the data on the first stage booster wasn't public, either, as everything in Pre-War America seemed to be confidential by default, but it was much less secret than the technical specifications on the Franklin-IV missile system. Why they named an ICBM after a notorious boozing womaniser, she didn't know. It didn't exactly have the same panache as the Minuteman of her previous world, but she thought that they were basically comparable systems. A Minuteman was ready in a minute, but Benjamin Franklin woke up at noon.

The USA did publish some data about their nuclear deterrence, though. As propaganda and or threats to other nations, she suspected. Or both. And if it could be believed, then they had a global reach and enough carrying capacity to carry either ten warheads configured for MIRV or eight and a couple dozen re-entry penetration aid decoys.

While the missile was still in its boost phase, Lily zoomed out on the surveillance feed and identified a few more silos. From her past military service, she knew that the traditional deployment structure of strategic missile batteries was in a field, with the command and control bunker nearby. The silos were completely underground, of course, with a mechanical door allowing the rocket to launch, and were intended to be able to survive "a near hit" of a one-hundred-kiloton-class weapon, but they weren't actually designed to survive direct hits at all.

Some of the silos in the field were destroyed, but others survived and had clearly already launched their payloads as the reinforced cement silo doors were open and filled with sand and dirt that had blown in over the two hundred years. There were three more that looked like they might still be operational, though, and Lily carefully selected each of the sites on her targeting system.

Perhaps the C2 bunker for these silos was destroyed before they launched their birds. In her past life, there was a secondary launch capability in the event this happened, a rocket would carry a UHF and very-low-frequency transmission in the event the President ordered a launch, and this system would initiate an automated launch if a silo's connection to its missile control launch centre was severed. That either did not exist here or, more likely, it was never utilised.

She had launched about three hundred nuclear explosives into orbit, but frustratingly she had only just begun launching the second Casaba howitzer type as there were some issues regarding its fabrication and testing that she had only recently solved, so there were only about two dozen of those available, and none that were in an orbit that would help here all that much to intercept this launch. All of them were designed to interdict space assets, but that didn't mean that they couldn't deorbit and smash into ground targets with fair accuracy, too.

After selecting the targets, she configured the deployment to have an identical time-on-target and selected three of her largest "regular nukes." This weapon deployment system required a number of cryptographic keys that only she possessed, and Lily felt that it was quite safe; however, just for "fun", she included an additional voiceprint analysis if she was targeting parts of the Earth. It wasn't really intended to add to her security because there were any number of ways to mimic her voiceprint, but it was just because she thought it would be cool.

"The release of nuclear weapons has been authorised," Lily said formally, channelling the many times she watched Crimson Tide. This finalised the strike package, and the system automatically selected three of the nearest orbiting weapons, calculated a simultaneous TOT deorbit, and sent the arming codes to the devices. She had configured the devices for ground burst as she was dealing with a hardened structure. They wouldn't just slam into the target; they would light off their plasma drive shortly before impact and fly full speed into it at 10Gs of acceleration.

Once one of her nuclear devices was "armed," it was essentially a nuclear explosion in a bottle, and Lily didn't feel comfortable having it around. Although she didn't include any of the anti-tampering technology Mass Fusion did, she still felt it was possible that some quirk could happen and the quantum force field could, even momentarily, be disrupted by some factor, perhaps an especially strong solar flare. If that happened, the weapons would explode. Or rather, the weapons had already exploded right now, and such an eventuality would cause the explosion to be released.

As such, any "abort" of these types of strike missions was limited. If she triggered an abort in time, the weapons could change targets and drop into the ocean or other places nobody cared about, like Australia. But past a certain point, well, it was going to happen. Realistically, nuclear weapons systems in her past life had no possible way to perform an abort after launch in the first place, though. That capability would be asking the enemy to hack your missiles, as apparently Dr House did with a majority of PLA Rocket Forces strikes in and around New Vegas, as he had told, or rather bragged to her. She was confident in her...

She paused her train of thought and considered, 'Wait a second!' She wanted to facepalm. He was just on the phone. She called him back, and he answered on the first ring.

"Can you hack the abort codes, if they exist, on a Franklin-IV ICBM? One was launched from a Nevada field, target presently unknown," Lily told him immediately, although it had been about seventy seconds already, and the odds that Washington D.C. was the target was shrinking in confidence levels, with her Muse telling her it was only a 27% probability now. The ICBM was boosting too much to need to hit us, which was the factor.

That didn't mean it still couldn't, but it would be an especially weird acute parabola if it did. You didn't lob rockets that way because it increased the time that the enemy had to deal with it. A more modest altitude for a short-range target would decrease the time they had to intercept.

One thing Lily liked about Dr House was he didn't care about pleasantries, even generally, but especially when rockets were firing, "No. Only certain US nuclear systems had abort codes. SLBMs launched from subs being almost the only ones because the politicians had concerns about a rogue Captain starting World War Three. I see the launch now that it is past a hundred kilometres; odds are, it isn't targeting you."

Lily nodded, or rather had her digital avatar nod and said, "Yes, I agree. Only twenty per cent now, although it could be releasing its second stage into orbit to come around at me from a weird angle." That sounded stupid to her, though. If they did even two-thirds of an orbit, she would have them destroyed, but whoever launched the missiles might not know that. Already, she had weapons changing orbits to maximise coverage to intercept in the mid-course any weapons targeting DC.

"Unlikely," was all Dr House said. She thought to say something but then noticed that it was going to be impossible for the launch to reach orbit anyway. The altitude was fine, but there wasn't enough horizontal velocity to stay up.

Lily hummed and mused as she watched the first stage of the missile perform a main engine cut-off and separation after a couple more minutes, "Abort codes on SLBMs seem a bit stupide, no? Isn't zhe whole idea to park your sub next to your enemy's coast and launch so zhat zhey only get a couple of minutes' notice? Zhere is no way the National Command Authority could notice zhe unauthorised launch, perform whatever authentication necessary to stop it and transmit it in time. Moreover, I doubt such an action would stop an enemy from retaliating, either." It would be enough time if the process was AI controlled and automated, though, she supposed.

Dr House's tone was cold and sarcastically amused, "Oh? Were the politicians of your universe especially intelligent, then?"

She considered that while watching the second stage accelerate for several more minutes and then observed the second stage of the weapon disgorge a couple of dozen objects, individual re-entry vehicles and decoys, she supposed. He had a point, too. The fact that she thought the people running governments were stupid was why she ran away from all that.

The decoys were of poor quality, inflatable Mylar, she guessed, or whatever brand name the local equivalent was called. They might be a comparable radar cross-section to the actual warheads, but they inflated after they were deployed. Soon after, to be sure, but Lily's radar systems saw it happen and had already identified the actual warheads amongst the chaff.

"Well, kind of. But only because zhere weren't really any unintelligent people left anymore. Not only did the Apocalypse kind of filter zhem out, but we discovered the genetic factors for low intelligence and developmental disorders long ago and removed zhem in vitro from following generations. 'owever, I take your point because many of zhem were not smart. Zhe nuance between intelligence and smarts is completely different," Lily finally told him as she watched the individual re-entry vehicles not bothering to decelerate much. There was likely no way they could make a retrorocket burn in order to fall down upon her at this point.

They clearly weren't targeting D.C., and they were already starting to decelerate slightly. Her surveillance system had a slowly shrinking circle of probable landing sites that still covered most of Europe. Why was someone nuking Europe?

It wasn't a Great Circle shortest path to Europe either though, that would have gone over Newfoundland and the Labrador Sea, coming at continental Europe from the northwest. They detoured to the south enough that it was plausible the Eastern seaboard was the target at first.

She wondered why they were taking a longer route, but it could be any reason, really, and probably one that wasn't relevant anymore with none of the nations still existing. Perhaps the programming of the missile expected heavier anti-ballistic missile coverage from the near-polar approaches, she just didn't know, nor did she care.

Dr House looked intrigued, "So there is a genetic component to general cognitive ability after all?"

Frowning, Lily said as she queued up a call to Sarah Lyons and, for the moment, halted the air raid sirens in Megaton, "Yes, but probably not in zhe way you zhink. Zhere isn't a detectable statistical difference in the cognitive ability of baseline humans regardless of where their phenotype originated from."

He snorted and shook his head, "That doesn't surprise me, and it wasn't what I was asking about. I meant is there is a genetic component to people at the tail-end of the distribution, the very, very intelligent or very, very unintelligent."

Oh. Lily was a bit uncharitable to suspect he was being casually racist, then. That's what she thought, considering his background, but she didn't feel like she had the moral standing to criticise him about it, though, as she had a long history of casual racism against bios in general. She had gotten quite a lot better now that she was one herself again, at least mostly.

Besides, when a person could change bodies like a set of clothes, disparaging one type of them wasn't the same as disparaging something they couldn't ever change about themselves. At least, that was what she told herself.

"Almost always in zhe latter case, but as far as the very gifted are concerned it is a lot more a matter of probabilities, but partly we zhink. Zhere isn't a strict recessive arrangement to generate a genius, zhough. Your parents could 'ave many children and not reproduce your fluke brilliance."

He snorted when she mentioned his parents, "Of that, I already knew. My parents certainly couldn't have done any worse with my brother," he said very dryly.

She continued, "We hadn't precisely solved zhat issue, even some AGIs were smarter than others. Zhere were some biomorphs that were designed to have similar processing power as some computer-based synths, but zhat is just speed-intelligence, not general cognition. Genius is much more a factor of neural network formation, we zhought, and zhat is still an emergent property."

Although she found the potential sibling drama vaguely interesting, Lily told him that she was muting him for a moment but didn't hang up this time, just put him on what effectively was hold. Calling Sarah back, she answered right away and said, "Hey, Doc. I have my Dad and Scribe Rothchild with me; I assume you have more info now?"

"Yes, zhe launch isn't targeting us," Lily shifted the screen Sarah Lyons was seeing from her face to a graphical representation of the launch, played back at a much higher speed for brevity's sake.

Sarah Lyons seemed to sigh with relief and watched the replay for a moment before asking, "Well, that's something. Do you know the target? Is this output real-time now?"

"Not precisely, yet, but continental Europe, for sure. Zhe likely CEP spans France to zhe Donbas, with Spain or Italy being slightly more likely," Lily informed them, "And yes, zhis is real-time now. I'll keep broadcasting zhis on zhis call on until zhese re-entry sleds strike zheir targets."

Really, her projections for the destination of each of the warheads were basically guesses. However, engineering and physics placed certain hard limits on where they could go, so they were educated guesses. She knew roughly how much volume each re-entry vehicle was after they separated from the second stage, and she had a guess on how much of that volume would be dedicated to the explosive.

Knowing this that gave her an upper bound to the amount of area that could be dedicated to thrusters and fuel, which meant that the number of manoeuvres each vehicle could make were limited in certain bounds based on its current orbital elements and the type of thrusters it had, which were likely a traditional and reliable hypergolic propellant-based RCS system.

Elder Lyons asked, his face appearing in frame, "Do you know or suspect who or what might be responsible?"

"Well, unless zhis is a fluke, or launch codes for strategic nuclear missiles are just kept laying around, it could only be a limited number of people or organisations. But, no, I don't presently 'ave any zheories," Lily told him. Privately, she was suspecting good ole President Eden, but she didn't have any real basis yet for that theory. She just knew the genocidal AI was a genocidal AI, and launching nukes was something a genocidal AI might do.

However… she could work backwards from that assumption to see if she could find anything to corroborate her guess. A ding told her that her retaliation hit the three possibly operable silos still around Nebraska. She rewound the surveillance to see the moment of the explosion. She had a formula for estimating the yield of a nuclear explosive on the size of the mushroom cloud, but it assumed an airburst. But, she suspected that each device gave about what she was expecting, which was about one megaton, judging from the amount of ejecta and hints of a crater after several minutes.

That would be a pretty total conversion of the fuel to energy, which probably made the devices rather ecologically friendly. There was probably a lot of prompt radiation but minimal lasting radiological fallout. Not very much uranium was used for this yield, either. She had been taking deliveries of the fuel rods from the Mechanist's reactor to use as fuel for these weapons.

She nodded; it was good to see something working as designed. She had only had a test detonation underwater and got a pretty giant geyser, even with the explosive a hundred metres down. She didn't want to do that any more than she had to because the ocean biome was probably one of the few ones that still was somewhat healthy, and she probably killed all the fish in twenty kilometres and deafened whales out to two hundred.

A number of people were calling her, so she answered the two most important, which were Submajor Wilson and the Apprentice. Her multitasking capability had reached a point where she could carry on two conversations at once if she focused on it.

"Commander, do you have an update?" asked Submajor Wilson formally. Lily had sent him a text with the details about a possible missile launch but had yet to speak with him.

Alice asked excitedly, "The sirens stopped going. Are we going to be blown up? Nick and Isis are here with me now." That surprised her, the two gremlins must have been playing just outside the hospital, she had thought their guard would have shifted to one of the secondary bomb shelters she had dug in various spots around Megaton. They weren't as safe, but you'd likely survive an air burst, but definitely not a ground penetrating bunker buster.

"Target is not us, it is Europe, no idea why. Will send you updates as I get them," her digital avatar told the Submajor, then disconnected.

At the same time, Lily's other digital avatar frowned at Alice, "No. The missile will hit Europe somewhere. Thankfully. Most of the population of the city would be incinerated if so, including most of Nick and Isis' friends at school."

"Oh… yeah, you're right. I suppose I shouldn't be so excited. Sorry, Mistress," Alice said, chagrined. Lily's avatar nodded at her. Think of all that effort wasted if they were all nuked to cinders. She paused and then asked, "Does this mean I can come back upstairs?"

Lily shook her head firmly, "No. Wait at least an hour. I have to go; I'll talk to you in a bit." With that, she disconnected from that call as well.

She just had to wait now, as even if you were going hypersonic in a suborbital trajectory, it would still take about fifteen more minutes for it to impact their targets.

She took a few questions from the Brotherhood while she waited until she noticed that the targets had begun a brief retrorocket burn to decelerate and were slightly spreading out. Checking her system indicated Italy was the likely target, specifically high probability being Sicily, which was mostly an uninhabited island these days.

Wait a minute! She had her first stage aircraft launch the probes into a southeasterly direction into the Mediterranean. She quickly pulled up her historical launches over the past month and sighed. The second-stage vehicles were not stealthy when they were reaching orbit, and sure enough, it appeared that it could have appeared like they had been launched from the east side of Sicily, from Catania or Syracuse, perhaps.

Well, that tore it. That meant that this was retaliation or an attempt to stop further space launches. The only way those launches could be observed was from space, from a number of look-down infrared/radar satellites that existed. Only American satellites were still in orbit, no other party was spared. Ergo, it had to be someone with access to American satellites but who did not know her actual location.

The Enclave, or rather President Eden itself, then. She was confident at three nines level that the stupid fucking computer was behind it. That also meant that she would have to break her promise with Dr House. The computer had to have used a communications satellite to broadcast the launch to that site in Nebraska. No way the Enclave drove out there, themselves.

That means if she didn't respond by nuking Raven Rock until the Mountain collapsed in on them, she would have to systematically dismantle every satellite in low-earth orbit that wasn't hers. How could she make it up to Dr House? She had promised not to deorbit more satellites than "necessary", but it was strictly speaking a necessity to remove them all now.

It was a survival imperative that the fucking chatbot pretending to be the President was cut off from further communication that wasn't in LOS of Raven Rock. She had no idea how many similar automated systems existed around the country. Maybe the next one wouldn't be something she could intercept because it wouldn't be a missile. She didn't have the imagination to guess the number of crazy ways Pre-War America devised to blow things up.

Fighting the Enclave wasn't really an option either. From what Grace and Miller told her there were about as many Enclave people, including their non-combatants, as there were in the Brotherhood. It would be an existential engagement that she might have to use nukes to be sure to win, even assuming the Brotherhood went all in on the conflict too. Their tech wasn't as good as the Enclave's, for example.

It was one thing to nuke Nebraska with nobody living within one hundred kilometres of that site and nobody seeing what happened anyway. However, if she just started dropping nukes on people nearby, she could see her relationship with the Brotherhood souring. They had a lot of weird beliefs that they were pointedly ignoring when dealing with her, but if she reminded them that she had an equivalent ability that destroyed the world once already, she would alienate them and might even create resurgent Outcast types.

She pulled up Dr House's call and told him in broad strokes what happened as she watched Syracuse and Catalina take two nukes apiece. Interestingly and confusingly, President Eden also nuked Malta for some reason, which was a completely uninhabited island, now. The rest of the ordinance landed in a couple of airports.

There weren't a lot of people living in Sicily, but there were still some. There were fewer now, though. Oh, well. It wasn't like she nuked them herself.

Most "regular" people would feel guilty at being "indirectly" responsible, but she didn't feel that way in the slightest. People were responsible for their own actions, and she wasn't about to take upon herself any guilt, which should all belong to that stupid computer. She did feel it was a shame, though, wasteful and unnecessary.

"That is unfortunate," was all Dr House said for a moment before he nodded, "Well. I'm certain I have sole control of the PERSEPHONE station. I will have their drones collect the most interesting and useful space vehicles right away. They should be all collected at the station within a week, and you can deorbit the rest. I'll need you to allow me more generalised access to your constellation, though, if I am not able to relay through a number of geostationary satellites anymore to control the station. It sounds like you should prioritise those geostationary comms sats if you intend to isolate the VAX unit." He even then forwarded a file with the orbital elements of the "interesting" satellites listed.

Lily expected more pushback from him. "I also really need that quantum processor fabrication technology as soon as possible," she told him, internally slightly hesitant. It wasn't a good negotiation position to tell the other party you really needed something they had quickly. She wasn't good at Social skill checks, but she at least knew that much.

Dr House nodded, "I've looked at what you're willing to trade. I want most of it, but I especially want to hire you to conduct a similar clone and brain transplantation surgery as you described conducting for those interesting people trapped in Braun's fantasy land. I also want the method you used for distributed processing on the Protectron-derivatives, the full copy of your quantum OS including source codes for all libraries and microkernel, your assistance in building a fusion power station on the Strip, in secret, a commitment not to assist the NCR to do the same for five years, and the design for your orbital system, including the fabrication method for micro-fusion cells."

Lily just blinked at him, "Uh. Zhat is too much. Way, way too much just for your quantum processors."

"Of course. I want to prioritise the brain transplant and fusion power station," he said simply, "The rest... well, I am sure I have other things to trade, as well. RobCo was very diversified towards the end, when I was staring at the near-certainty of global nuclear war, well, sometimes I had to be even shrewder than usual."

Lily frowned. She did not want to go to Vegas. Well, she did want to. But not anytime soon. "How about I train someone to do the surgery and send them?"

"No. Completely unacceptable. I'm sorry, but I don't precisely trust anyone that much. You could send a sacrificial pawn to murder me," he said firmly.

She chuckled, "Zhen why would you trust moi?"

"Because it is clear you intend to live a very long time, too. And if you kill me during surgery, I assure you that you won't survive it. Conversely, if I kill you, I am sure you would have some automated system drop rocks on the Strip for the next fifty years," he said, completely calmly. He must not have eyes on Nebraska, otherwise he would know she didn't need to use kinetic bombardment.

Lily grinned, feeling pleased for some reason she couldn't determine. On the surface, his precautions seemed prudent, but it seemed like he might be trying to save face. If she was the one responsible for cloning and providing his new body, she could install a million different time bombs that he was unlikely to be able to detect, even if he sequenced his new body's genome, if she really wanted to do him harm. That would be going against her general principles, though.

She sent a text message to Sarah Lyons, telling her that based on the targets, she thought she knew who fired the missile, but she needed some time to investigate things and would call her back later. "Zhat is rational. 'owever, choose something else. I don't want to wait until you build a runway in secret. I need zhe processors as soon as possible. Plus, I 'aven't even yet built an aircraft zhat can carry passengers or cargo."

"Don't worry. I am absolutely certain I have enough useful information and utility in the future to trust you will not defect in this game iteration, as you would lose the possibility of playing future games with me," he said, surprising her by succinctly summarising her own approach to life.

Life was a series of iterative cooperative, sometimes competitive games, in the game theory sense. It didn't matter so much that you won every single one unless it was a life-or-death game. Some of them were zero-sum, but most were not. Having fellow players for the next iteration of games was as important as how you did in this particular game. Even if the game you were in was a competitive zero-sum game, the next one might not be.

And cooperation was something that was more than the sum of its parts. The beneficial output of a cooperative game was more than simply the collected inputs added together. It was even occasionally multiplicative. As someone who intended to live a very long time, she would rarely consider defecting in the prisoner's dilemma sense, and the only way she would ever consider it was if she could both eliminate the other party and prevent anyone from finding out she ever had done so.

Any other choice reduced her trustworthiness, and therefore, her performance in further game iterations, even games with different people, would be impacted. In other words, if someone didn't trust her because she betrayed the last guy, they wouldn't cooperate. It was a losing proposition for the very long-lived. Only the mentally ill or mayfly flat bios who lived in the moment and didn't expect to survive past their allotted four score and ten years, would generally consider betraying people consistently.

This was one of the most important things she was trying to teach her Apprentice, and she felt that Alice had picked up on it when she sat the girl down and laid out how long Alice would likely live if she didn't do something stupid to get herself killed.

Right as she was about to agree, her Muse interrupted her again.

[Thermal bloom consistent with ballistic missile launch detected.]

Fucking again?! She pulled up the map, expecting some missile field in Wyoming but was surprised when it was just east of Sicily, in the Med. It was very near Syracuse, which was still smouldering. Well, you know what they said: Never bet against a Sicilian when death was on the line, so it wasn't surprising they had some sort of automated retaliation set up. It just was very unfortunate she lived in the former capital of America, as that would be a good target, but at least she thought she could intercept this one.

Was it a sub? No, it was very shallow, and even her inferior optics would have detected a sub. A submerged ICBM silo, then. That was an interesting idea she had never thought of before. Two were launched, but one exploded in a large ball of fire as soon as it cleared the waves.

The second started its burn, reaching several thousand metres, but well before reaching max-Q, something went wrong. It was fairly close to Syracuse, which was currently experiencing some unforecast turbulence on account of the pyrocumulus cloud, so perhaps that was the cause, or it could have been any number of mechanical failures. But the missile veered off course.

Unfortunately for Sicily, there was no range safety officer to initiate an abort of the launch there, so the rocket started spinning end over end, very dramatically, and eventually crashed almost directly into the new crater in Syracuse, flying straight through the still-burning mushroom cloud to do so.

Thankfully for the survivors in the area of Syracuse, if there were any, whatever payload that missile carried was not fail-fused. There was no second giant nuclear explosion, but there was probably a considerable conventional one depending on how much fuel the rockets had left, but her sensors couldn't penetrate the mushroom cloud still hanging over the remains of the ancient city. Talk about adding insult to injury.

This highlighted why President Eden's days had to be numbered. Not only could he, perhaps, do something terrible to her, but she lived in DC! The obvious target for an automated revenge system if their computers thought America was nuking them. If he kept doing terrible things to other places... well, who knew how many automated retaliation systems there were? Thankfully the Italians couldn't build an ICBM that lasted two hundred years.

Lily shook her head and mentally grabbed her avatar on Dr House's call, "Okay. I accept. Your quantum processor fabrication method, and it 'as to be an industrial one in exchange for me coming to New Vegas, cloning a replacement body to your specifications and performing a brain transplant operation on you, and assistance in building a similar power station and not assisting NCR in any way on similar power technology for at least zhree years." That was as much as she was willing to agree to. She wasn't even willing to guarantee secrecy; that would be up to him.

"Excellent. I will accelerate the already in place work to pave a runway. You said your aircraft need at least fifteen hundred metres, yes? Will this extend to the version that carry passengers, as well?" he asked, brightly.

Fifteen hundred metres was conservative, assuming unfavourable wind conditions and bad weather, including a slippery or icy runway where breaking action using tires, was less effective. She was pretty confident in designing an aircraft that could carry passengers to land in that much space, or less.

She nodded, "Yes, zhat should be enough." After that, they traded files. She sent him both the blueprints and engineering data she got from Dr Madison Li, as well as the real-life data from her mostly finished project. He sent her the complete blueprints, engineering data and source code for a machine that could rapidly assemble quantum processors.

She looked at it briefly and nodded. It didn't look like she would have trouble building this. One interesting part was that the production methodology required microgravity to get proper crystalisation of the computational matrix, and it used levitation fields to simulate this.

She hadn't considered that solution because the optical quantum processors from her past world also required microgravity to be produced, but she already tested levitation fields and found them insufficient. If you were in one you wouldn't notice, but they oscillated at several hundred thousand hertz. So for a very little time gravity was effecting you, which was enough to totally wreck the carbon hyper-matrix. Even the amount of gravity in low earth orbit would be enough to ruin the process, so she was going to wait until she had her own space station, even if it was a robotic one, in geostationary orbit before trying to produce them again.

Were these levitation devices different from the ones she had, or was this type of quantum processor just much more robust? She didn't know, but it would be fascinating to find out! Dr House's quantum processors seemed significantly more efficient than the optical versions she remembered for the same amount of volume, but they massed more because they had very high metal content, including high rare earth content. That made them "more expensive" to make than something that was just carbon, though, too.

Shaking her head, she said, "Zhank you, Dr House. I'll work on getting a suitable aircraft when I am no longer in mortal peril."

---xxxxxx---

It took most of the rest of the morning to get Megaton calmed down. But Alice was in a chipper mood all day. When Lily asked about it, she told her, "Well, you see. It's both nice to have someone care about me enough that they'd protect me from a nuclear bomb, and the feeling of safety that comes with the realisation that even if the entire city was blown up I, and my brother and sister, would likely survive it."

Lily, acting with lightning speed, used a couple of quick console commands on her computer to halt the blush response, including the releasing of small amounts of vasoconstrictors from her installed cybernetic personal pharmacopoeia, which took most of the area her liver used to until she replaced that horrid thing last month, along with both kidneys. She just nodded, hand covering her mouth and said, "I see. Well! I have to go talk to some bankers!"

With that, Lily hurried off, leaving Alice to her own devices. She had to find Miller, so she figured Grace would be a good place to start. Lily didn't exactly track everyone all the time. But her systems did recognise people in her building, and as they walked through it and that basically amounted to the same thing. She queried the database, hoping to see when Grace left this morning but found out she was still here, in Lily's private boudoir.

Lily blinked. She had left the woman sleeping in her bed to go downstairs and work on a few projects as well as bomb Baltimore. It was already close to ten in the morning. Could she still be sleeping? It was true that she kept Lily awake most of the night, but.

Lily frowned, starting to feel slight guilt. It was an unusual emotion, as she only felt it when she actually did, or in this case, obviously neglected to do something important. She didn't feel guilty about the couple hundred of people living in a settlement in Syracuse, because she didn't have anything to do with the decision to bomb it. However, she was the reason why Grace might have been incinerated in her sleep if that launch had been targetting Megaton.

Grace likely couldn't hear the air raid sirens due to the fact that Lily's private apartment was almost completely soundproof. It was true that the reason she designed the room that way was Grace herself, so it might have been poetically ironic if that was a major contributing factor to the woman's death, but Lily still felt bad. She should have checked with Grace after she was sure Alice was safe.

Lily had assumed the woman got up and left a few hours ago. Walking into her private apartment, Lily could see that she was awake now and in the shower. Well, no need to rush her that much, but Lily did need to speak to Miller before her meeting with Sarah Lyons.

The statuesque Amazon left the shower, and Lily admired her body. It was going to be something of a shame when she released her next longevity treatment, which was the seventh generation. It would include a biological process that eliminated scars but on organs and, of course, the skin as well. Grace had a number of scars, and privately Lily thought they were quite fetching.

Before the woman got too amorous, Lily explained what had happened this morning.

"What?! Fuck! I need to get dressed and get back," she said, glancing around for her clothes, "Where's my panties?" she asked aloud, searching.

Lily used her impressive memory and pointed in the opposite direction of where she was searching, "You threw zhem zhat direction last night, confidently stating you would never need zhem again. Also, I need to speak to Miller, too. I'm pretty sure it was President Eden zhat did zhis."

Grace blanched but then turned thoughtful, "Yeah, maybe. But why Europe?"

"I'd rather not repeat myself," Lily said mildly. She knew that Grace was, while putatively, an NCO, in actuality, she was Miller's number two or possibly three. She'd be in the meeting with Miller too, or he would tell her everything right after.

Grace nodded, "Okay. He'd probably be at the bank; he'd have evacuated everyone into the basement levels you built for us. Do you think that would have provided protection?"

Lily hummed, "Some, to be sure." But probably not enough if all eight nukes were configured for groundburst and struck downtown Megaton.

Grace nodded, surprisingly quick to don all of her clothes, even still slightly damp, "Alright, let's go,"

---xxxxxx---

Her discussion with Miller went fairly well, but she had to really work to convince him to come with her to meet the Brotherhood.

She thought she was only going to meet Sarah Lyons, as she had as of yet refused to go to the Brotherhood's seat of power in the Pentagon. She realised that was impolite and somewhat untrusting, so she never insisted on Elder Lyons ever being part of the meetings she requested. He was equivalent to her, in the sense that he was what amounted to a Head of State as well.

In this case, Sarah asked for a compromise, and the meeting was held at the Brotherhood enclave in Megaton, whose rooftop helipad was finally finished being constructed. It was still a bit dangerous for her if they ever decided to betray her as she did not restrict what or how many weapons they could bring into the city. The Submajor wasn't enthusiastic about the idea, either, but she felt it was an acceptable compromise since both the Elder and the Head Scribe were going to be attending, also.

Most of her security detachment waited outside, but she brought the Submajor and one trooper inside with her, along with Miller, who was in his own set of Enclave-issued Advanced Power Armour, which brought more stares than anything else. The Submajor still presently had a T-60 derivative that was standard issue; she hadn't yet got around to designing a mass-producible set of armour similar to the one she or the Apprentice had. Each was a one-of-a-kind handmade product.

Sarah Lyons stared at him as they all entered the conference room and asked hopefully, "You looted that from an Enclave patrol, right?"

Miller considered his response before saying, his voice distorted by the Armour's external speakers, "Not precisely." Then he realised that he was the only one wearing a helmet and quickly removed his, holding it under his arm like it was a garrison cap. His face surprised those present, not because they didn't recognise him but because they did.

"This is my personal friend Captain Miller. You know him as Mr Miller, the chief executive of zhe Megaton Bank," Lily said mildly. Lily expected that the name of the bank would change as they were already planning to build a branch in Rivet City, too. "He is away without proper leave from President Eden's infantry forces and 'as been for almost ten years."

They all relaxed when they realised he was a deserter. Sarah Lyons nodded, "Ohhh... that makes a lot more sense now. Especially why your bank has so much power armour and advanced equipment for 'security.' Did your entire platoon or company desert at the same time?"

Miller winced a bit at the word 'desert' but nodded, "Yes. My father was a rival with the Enclave military commander, and ..." with that, he gave a brief summary of events.

Elder Lyons and Sarah Lyons looked interested and slightly sympathetic, but the Head Scribe looked very interested and commented, "We've had a few Enclave deserters here and there join us in the past, but never an officer."

Lily interrupted him before he started interrogating Miller about things of interest and said, "He is 'ere because he can provide some useful information and insight into how we may respond to this nuclear launch situation."

That caused them to blink again before Sarah Lyons asked, "Wait, are you saying the Enclave is responsible? Your old CO nuked Italy?" she asked, totally flabbergasted and confused.

Instead of conducting this meeting standing up, Lily held up a hand, and everyone paused in order to sit around a large table. The chairs were quite large, so she felt like a toddler sitting in a grown-up's chair, as they were designed for people using Power Armour. Still, they put a cushion on that was pretty comfortable, even if her feet didn't quite reach the floor.

"I'm not sure zhe Enclave even knows what happened, not even Colonel Autumn. But President Eden is definitely responsible; I have confirmed this both by logical inference as well as an archived transmission my orbital satellites noticed from a Satellite relay station to the southwest just before zhe launch," Lily told them all. She was already confident Eden was responsible, and using that, she backtracked on how he could have done it. Her constellation listened to most frequency bands, and she had enough storage to store it all. The transmission was encrypted, but the timing was telling.

Elder Lyons now asked, "Wait, that doesn't make any sense. Logically, these orders would be passed through his military commander, this Colonel Autumn."

"Yes, if President Eden was a real person, zhat would make sense. But he is not," Lily said, firmly. She noticed that the conference room had one of her large two-hundred-centimetre displays and pointed to it, "Would you allow me to use your display?" It wasn't surprising that the Brotherhood, who were used to a certain level of technology already, were her best customers.

The Head Scribe nodded, "Certainly. Honestly, I'm surprised you're not able to override its privacy settings."

Lily frowned at him, "I don't actually include any backdoors on any of the products I sell." It was true, too. Although most of them utilised her Mesh network, she could still gather, passively, a lot of information about the locations of people using them, though, but she didn't have any backdoor access to even the e-readers she sold.

Only the devices she made and issued, like the e-readers in the public libraries or schools and the LilyPads issued to citizens, and her troops even included automatic over-the-air updates. As for the rest? The operator had to approve each update.

He realised he had offended her, "I don't mean to offend. I'm a professional paranoid about third-party sourced pieces of technology." Then he used one of her LilyPad devices to adjust the settings of the display, "These are becoming quite popular too."

She nodded. She originally designed them for use in the hospital as a self-service check-in kiosk and a way to see when a patient's number was called. She had been automating as much of the menial labour as possible, and sometimes, she forgot that not everyone could play a film back in their brains as she or the Apprentice could.

The Elder carefully avoided interrupting her until her presentation started, despite wanting to interject to ask what she meant by Eden not being a real person.

The display came to life, showing a waveform and playing one of Eden's speeches from his radio show, "I'm sure you've realised that Eden seems, well, demented, right? I'm sure everyone realises I grew up in the Pre-War period, right?" Everyone nodded, "Everything he says is completely ridiculous, even for the insane Presidents we had back then."

The volume of Eden's speech was low so that they could talk over it. Rothchild said reasonably, "We just assumed it was all propaganda and made up? If he isn't a 'real person', then what is he?" He asked the question that the Elder was itching to ask, so the once older man settled down.

"An artificial intelligence, specifically a Pre-War VAX unit that was installed in a continuity of government site near DC," Lily said, pointing to the display, "Beyond the fact that his stories sound like an amalgamation of all the myths of former Presidents from Jefferson to Lincoln, his voice..."

The waveform shifted to a full spectrgram, "Zhere are tell-tale signs zhat zhis voice is electronically generated. 'ere, look. I 'ave a similar system zhat handles non-priority voice calls for me." The spectrogram of Eden's voice shifted to a split screen, "On the left zhis is my real voice, on the right zhis is zhe fake. This is what they sound like."

They listened to them; Sarah Lyons said, "Sounds identical."

Lily nodded and then shifted the 'fake' side to the right to make three columns, "See? Zhis left side is Eden, zhis right side is zhe fake me, with the real me on the far end. See the similarities, not in the sound, but in zhe spectrogram?"

Scribe Rothchild hummed and nodded, "Yes, I see what you're trying to say. But perhaps the voice is just digitally post-processed?"

Lily shook her head, "No. I know for sure Eden is an AI. Nobody but Colonel Autumn and before him Autumn's father have ever met him. Miller can confirm this."

Miller spent several minutes confirming this and mentioning how there was not even a single Enclave soldier that had ever served as a personal protection team for the President and how he was as surprised as they were, but Lily had convinced them.

Lily then spent some time explaining why Sicily was a target for the nuke.

"Okay, I believe you. I can see why, if this computer had access to Pre-War satellites, it could have thought it was retaliating against whoever was responsible for launching your new system if you launched them east into the Med," the Elder said, but tilted his head to the side confusedly, "But this just makes it worse, if the Enclave is run by some psychopathic computer system."

Miller sat up straighter, "I think this is why she asked me to attend. It's because it isn't. I think she was concerned you might start an immediate war with the Enclave when she told you they were the ones that were using nukes, again."

Everyone on the Brotherhood's side nodded, except Rothchild, who just sighed, "If we could get that damn robot working..." he murmured to himself before being shushed by Sarah Lyons.

"Yes, that would be the only response that would be rational. In fact, that it's a computer doing it makes me all the more firm in that decision," the Elder said severely.

Miller shook his head, "Eden doesn't really control the Enclave, though. I may have a lot of personal issues with the Colonel, but he isn't a stupid man, and he is very ambitious. Colonel Autumn is the one in charge, and always has been since his father died. Knowing what I know now, I believe the only reason Colonel Autumn allows Eden to play President is that there are a number of automated production facilities that he isn't sure would work without the mainframe, which is what Eden apparently is, operating. We had a lot of good scientists, so perhaps they could get them running again... eventually."

Lily nodded, "Yes, precisely. Some level of conflict is unavoidable now, but we just 'ave to either isolate or destroy the AI. I'm taking steps to do that now by destroying all of the Pre-War comms satellites still in orbit."

Originally, her plan to deal with the Enclave was to use her Chinese stealth armour to sneak into Raven Rock, possibly asking Miller for assistance and subduing Colonel Autumn. Then she intended to scan his memories, scoop out his brain and install a computer that would puppet his body like a marionette.

Puppet-Autumn would then have brought Captain Miller back into the fold, made him his second-in-command and then conveniently died sometime later. But she didn't believe Miller ever wanted to return to the Enclave, to begin with, plus it would be such a pain in the ass to conduct a solo mission these days. She sighed internally, 'You take over one city or country, and your life becomes so much more limited.'

"You don't think this Colonel Autumn would prosecute a full conflict and might be open to negotiations?" the Elder asked distastefully.

"Publically, no. Privately, possibly. I zhink privately he would be very appreciative zhat we pulled Eden's fangs, even if all we can do is isolate him from any former Pre-War computer system. I zhink he would be, at least, open to a détente. We can't allow a psychopathic and possibly genocidal computer continued access to nuclear weapons or their delivery systems, and I can't track zhem all down," Lily said firmly, pointing to the display which showed a playback of the failed Italian ICBM launch, "Zhis was a failed launch of two European ICBMs after zhe detonations in Sicily and Malta. I am confident it was an automated retaliation system. Zhankfully, zhis launch failed. I don't know its target, but you live in the Pentagon. It is probably zhe first target for any automated revenge systems. It isn't just Eden blowing us all up zhat we 'ave to worry about, but him triggering some retaliation by a as yet quiescent Pre-War system by recklessly lobbing nukes around."

Sarah Lyons said what was on everyone's mind, "Fuck."

The Elder nodded, "Quite. Yes. I think we're all agreed, then. We'll have to conduct limited operations against the Enclave, immediately. Targets will be manned or unmanned satellite relays and general broadcasting stations. Even without satellites, he could use short-wave transmitters to reach anywhere in the continental United States, and I agree that this is no longer tolerable. Maxson knows how many fucking automated silos still exist." He glanced at Miller and continued, "Simultaneously, we'll see if we can't privately contact this Colonel and tell him where the bear shits in the woods, and he can like it or lump it."

Well, that was a bit more confrontational than she had hoped, but it still wasn't going to be a total war on each side, at least not yet. Also, what the hell was that bear in the woods idiom about?