Chapter 89: Chapter 85

I felt a distinct lack of urgency towards the so-called war against the Brotherhood of Steel. It gave me stuff to look forward to displaying, but other than that our R&D projects were moving as expected, and the big ones would likely be in time for even the fastest major assault the Brotherhood could muster.

Also helping to keep things calm, a few eyebots had been allocated to the Capital Wasteland. Sure, I could just send in a quick strike to level the Pentagon-turned-Citadel, but that’d be snapping off a branch. Lyons had said that we were dealing with a unified Brotherhood now, so it would be better off getting as many eggs in the basket before I crushed it all for some omelets.

Already the spying was paying off, as runners were seen leaving the Capital Wasteland, and small Brotherhood convoys began trickling in as soon as the elder got back. With Sarah’s help, I was able to identify the well guarded heap of metal just outside the Citadel, apparently before she had made her way over to us Lyons and her people had sabotaged Liberty Prime and its holding bay, though the damage to the former wasn’t as thorough which resulted in the Brotherhood dragging out the pieces to assemble on the surface.

I couldn’t help but grin at the prospect of seeing that wimpy robot take to the field against us. It’d make for an excellent target for broadcasting the Nexus’ latest defenses.

Maybe I could quietly offer them some help, get them to bring Liberty Prime up to functionality within a month? Hm…

Anyway, with the enemy simply mustering their strength far away, I focused on closer issues. The Brotherhood defectors were an easy enough thing to settle, the same probationary citizenship as everyone else, along with highly recommended mental rehab. The idea of defecting was a traumatic process for some of them, as much as they understood the necessity of it.

A good thing we had medical bots with mental healthcare programming, eh? They’d been bloody useful when we were taking in rescued slaves, and even some of the boys and girls from 1st Company still booked sessions.

Unfortunately, my console only handled physical damage and didn’t have anything to help mental stuff. Otherwise we could’ve de-aged people without them suffering from massive brain damage. Apparently something to do with the mind struggling to maintain adult functions as it regressed.

Other than rehab though, the former Brotherhood people had no issues in integrating into the Nexus. Their training and experience was welcomed by Edward and the other company leaders, so while they might not be directly recruited yet, former Paladins and Knights could offer valuable improvements to our training regime.

As for the scribes, I personally brought them to Ix and enjoyed their shock at the less classified stuff. At the rate they were enthusiastically working there, they’d be subsidizing their probation very quickly.

And since we’re talking about former BoS, it was a good thing they quickly learned to drop their old loyalties, since the Nexus also hosted Enclave defectors. I got reports that the two groups had mingled rather amicably, and were even trading stories. Thankfully, nobody tried making a fuss about sharing spaces with former enemies.

In the weeks that followed the defection from Lyons, the eyes in the sky gave little cause to worry and the Nexus continued its stable growth. More residential areas were opened up on the surface, connected with neat asphalt roads to Station 81 or other newly built subway stations. We had the tech and resources now to furnish every home with basic furniture, AC units, a fridge, a television, and a radio. If they wanted to personalize and upgrade, it was up to them and their credits.

The idea was to offer a basic, non-shitty lifestyle that also hopefully motivate them to go out to be happily productive to enjoy more than just the basics. And it worked; reports showed that those moving into the surface dwellings didn’t remain idle for long, and our human workforce was expanding the Nexus’ artisanal, agricultural and entertainment industries.

I purposely kept people from working the quarries, ruins and processing factories for now, preferring to leave the heavier and riskier jobs to the bots. It made for better PR and minimized fuckups from human error. Plus, the Sentinels got work done so fast that I had to get Eva to slow them down to a daily quote or risk overstuffing our storage with slow-to-deplete raw materials.

Other than the happy growth on the Nexus’ surface, there was also happy news (well, for some of us) from Tleilax. Experimentation with the FEV-laced super mutants had resulted in a sort of vaccine. It purged out the mutative stuff from infected cells and somehow managed to correct the damage. The process was a horrible death sentence on heavily FEV-infected things, like super mutants - the poor sods slowly melted down to a bloody goo when vaccinated.

The corrective behavior from the vaccine was adapted to serve beyond just FEV. Working on some lunatic hunch, someone had the idea of infecting a brahmin embryo with the FEV, then vacced it. Miraculously, the vaccine not only corrected the damage done by the artificial virus, but also cleaned up the preexisting rad mutations. According to Eva’s briefing and Curie’s more palatable summary, it resulted in the DNA reverting to a time before it was a brahmin.

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We would be getting a cow. Finally, a proper, fuzzy, derpy and delicious moo cow. Cheeses. We’d get those too.

Just to be safe, the embryo would be allowed to mature and turn into a calf to see if there were any latent side effects to the treatment, but if Eva and Curie were optimistic, I’ll join them in that sentiment.

Buoyed by the happy discovery, I had eyebots sent out to look for herds of more animals we could regress. Radstags were already being rounded up, so now we needed to find us mutated porkies and sheep to go along with the beef and venison.

“Could it work on seafood?” I remember asking belatedly, to which Eva paused for a second to calculate before answering.

“Not enough experimenting has been done on non-mammalian organisms to offer a definitive conclusion.”

Which meant ‘there’s only one way to find out’.

So mirelurks, whatever freakish coastal fishies, and since we’re at it, birds were also being chased down by Eversors to be rounded up and experimented on.

Now surely, there wouldn’t be anything to dramatically sour my mood, right?

“Sev, thanks for meeting me.” I guess I had to descend from the peak eventually. Sarah Lyons had requested a private meeting. She had been open to sharing her knowledge about the Brotherhood, as well as other useful stuff about the Capital Wasteland and the lands around it. Her talent and experience also was a boon to our strategic and tactical planning. So of course I’d be willing to bring her into my office to listen to whatever she had to say and was prepared to help her with whatever favor she was about to ask.

I just hoped it wasn’t going to be something like keeping particular people alive, extracting someone from deep in Brotherhood territory, or other bullshit tropes that unnecessarily escalates the situation. I wouldn’t want to encounter the BoS until they were ready.

Fuck, come to think about it, she better not ask to return to the Capital Wasteland either. Can’t have her go lone wolf and irritate or even damage the BoS buildup.

“Could I… Could we…”

I blinked away the speculations rushing through my head and stared at her with surprise. The battle-hardened veteran was chewing on her lip, struggling to maintain eye contact, and there was a faint but definite blush on her cheeks. That she was behaving like that in combat gear made her look even more…cute? Is this gap moe or something?

“Are you sure?” I simply asked back, and she gave a quick but shaky nod.

Huh, guess I wasn’t coming down from the peak just yet.

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