Amy and Sarah stood in front of Drew in the manager’s office. Gemma was sat in the corner, listening in as the two passed on what they had heard from town.
“Some scavengers saw a group at the old military base,” Amy said. “They had power armor, Gutsy’s, and a working truck.”
Drew nodded. “Just like we thought,” he said with a long sigh. “That place was heavily fortified, which is why none of the scavengers wanted to touch the place. Too many turrets and too many robots.”
“What do we do?” Sarah asked. “Do you really think we can fight them?”
“I’m gonna give it a shot,” he said, “Good work, both of you.
“Thanks,” Amy said.
As the two stepped out of the office, Gemma stepped over to his desk, though she had to stoop due to the low ceiling. “If Lotte finds out they left the factory yesterday afternoon and didn’t get back until this morning, there will be trouble.”
“Lotte can go fuck herself,” Drew said firmly. “For all we know, it was her actions that drew them to you in the first place. Stories of Greenclaws were already being passed around.”
“We didn’t kill if we didn’t have to,” Gemma said, seemingly out of nowhere. “We scared them away.”
Drew stared at her for a moment. “You might have scared them away, Gem, but those people remembered.”
“So you agree with Lotte then?”
He frowned. The conversation felt like it was quickly going off the rails. “How do you mean?”
“Lotte wanted us to kill people if they saw us, but we convinced her that scaring people away was better. It looks like she might have been right. There wouldn’t have been any stories of us being passed around if there was no one left alive to spread them.”
Drew took in a deep breath. Her initially seemingly divergent conversation suddenly made sense. “It wasn’t the correct course of action if you wanted to keep hidden, but it was the right thing to do.”
“We thought so, too,” Gemma agreed. “Though that means it was us that drew their attention.”
“Maybe,” Drew said, feeling uncertain. “Still, it was the better of the two options.”
“We know.”
He stood up. “Enough of all that. It’s time we got to work. Where are Veronica and the others?”
“In the cafeteria, I think,” Gemma answered. “If you’re talking about us Greenclaws then most are in the big warehouse.”
“Can you bring her and anyone else that wants to help to the factory floor? I want to do some final checks on the Sentry bot line before we do a test run. Then we can start bringing another of the production lines back online.”
“Sure thing.”
Gemma left the office, her feet thumping across the concrete floor with every step, it only stopping when she paused to crawl through the doors and out into the hallway beyond.
Drew leaned back in his chair as he spun around and stared out of the large segmented windows. He was mentally preparing himself for the hard day ahead of him. By the time he went to bed tonight, he hoped to have had at least some Sentries built, though he also knew that he had to anticipate a plethora of things going wrong.
“Just stop overthinking it,” he muttered to himself as he stood up out of the chair. It was thoughts like those that had stopped him from fully committing. If he’d decided to put the work in and stop procrastinating, he’d have had one or more lines active by now and he would have been in a far better position.
With renewed determination, Drew headed out of the office and made his way downstairs, though unfortunately, the walk from the manager’s office to the factory floor was far from uneventful.
As he left the stairwell, he bumped into the smallest of the Greenclaws who appeared to be waiting for someone. Her unexpected presence gave him a small fright, which she seemed to relish.
“Bek, isn’t it?” he asked.
She appeared surprised. “You remembered?”
“Of course.”
Her look of surprise faded into a menacing frown. “You know, it’s pretty dangerous to be walking around unattended when there are dangerous predators lurking the halls.”
Drew stared at her for a moment. He wasn’t sure whether it was a threat, a warning, or both. Something about her was familiar, though. There was an air of arrogance and the name ‘Bek’ gave him a hint.
“I’m guessing you were Rebecca.”
She wasn’t impressed. “My name is Bek,” she said as she raised up her claws and began to grind them against each other as though she was sharpening them.
Clearly, it had been meant as a threat. Her whole demeanor was threatening, and considering he believed it was Rebecca, it didn’t surprise him. She had been the daughter of the town leader back and Paulson and had been a spoiled brat. She was and had been the cause of a lot of unnecessary conflict and mainly because she had wanted more than her fair slice. She had even started using her position as the leader’s daughter to try and coerce people, promising retribution and punishment if they didn’t do what she wanted. At one point she had accused Jack of sexual harassment. Thankfully, Grace and a few others had been a witness to her threats and it hadn’t flown.
Now that Rebecca was a Greenclaw, she no doubt felt a power she had never felt before, especially considering that she could eviscerate him with her claws without even trying.
Thankfully, she didn’t act on her threats and simply walked away, but not before shoving him aside into the wall.
It was a show of power. She was telling him how much stronger than him she was, and how she felt that he was beneath her. He knew that he would have to keep an eye on her, for no other reason than to ensure the safety of the other humans here. Not that he could do much against her, but Gemma, Veronica, Kiki, Sekka, and Axa certainly could.
Shaking off the unpleasant encounter, he continued on to the factory floor where he found Veronica sitting next to another Greenclaw, one he hadn’t talked to yet.
They both looked over at him and Veronica gestured to her friend. “Have you met Glower, yet?”
He shook his head. “No, I haven’t. It’s nice to meet you.”
Glower didn’t respond, though from what he could remember from what he was told, she apparently didn’t speak.
Veronica confirmed it a moment later. “She doesn’t talk.”
“It’s still very nice to meet you, Glower.”
Veronica stood up. “So, what’s the plan?”
“The plan is to get the Sentry line up and running.”
“Looks like it’s nearly there already.”
“One can hope,” Drew said as he headed over to the line in question.
He grabbed his toolbox from the locker and walked along the length, checking every bolt while also making sure the conveyor belt was properly aligned. It looked good for the most part, and it was certainly a lot better than when he had found it. Still, he had to tighten a few bolts and required Veronica’s help to realign parts of the belt. With that done, he grabbed a current tester and began checking the wiring.
Finally finished, he walked over to the panel on the far wall and hit the button. He listened as the soft hum of flowing electricity emanated from the Sentry line.
Drew looked over at Veronica. “I’ll start a test run. No building anything yet. I just want to make sure all the parts are moving.”
“Okay,” Veronica said. “Do you want me to do anything?”
He pointed over to a big red button on the wall. “You have your hand on that emergency button ready to shut the whole thing down if something goes wrong.”
Veronica walked over to the button and stood next to it before she nodded. “Ready.”
Drew looked at the board. “Got a few red lights on the Sentry line, but nothing serious.”
“It’s up to you,” Veronica said.
He made his way over to a terminal. “Okay, I’ve selected test settings, and I’m going to go through a single sequence. This will either go well or badly.”
“How do you think it’s going to go?”
“My bet is that it has no issues. The warnings are mostly maintenance-related such as it wants the conveyor belt to be replaced, which ain’t gonna happen.”
“What if things go badly?”
“Well, that could set us back a few weeks or months depending on how badly things go,” Drew answered. “Now, let’s not dwell on what-ifs and do the test. I will start it up in 3… 2… 1…”
There was an initial judder before everything sprung into life, followed by a loud hum. The three of them watched as it ran through the test sequence. All the parts grunted and clanked, but thankfully nothing broke or seemed like it was going to break.
As the test sequence completed and the line powered down, Drew clapped his hands together happily. “It might actually work.”
“Appears that way,” Veronica agreed.
“The next step is to do one full sequence and have it build a single Sentry bot.” He quickly checked the log. “There were a few red marks on the test sequence but it’s all to do with needing to replace components, which we can’t do. They only need to last long enough for us to get through all the Sentry components we have in stock.”
His gaze snapped over to the double doors as they opened. Jack stepped inside followed by Sekka and finally Gemma.
“You’re just in time,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “We’re gonna construct a Sentry. Thankfully, munitions aren’t part of the manufacturing process so we don’t have to worry about that part going wrong and blowing us all up.”
“Wait,” Veronica said. “We don’t have munitions?”
“We do have some in the stock warehouse but like I said, they aren’t part of the construction process. At least not in this particular factory.”
He flexed his fingers before he went through all the settings, making sure everything was set up correctly. The last thing he wanted was to get this far only to mess things up due to an unchecked box.
“Everything looks okay,” he said.
“So we’re ready?” Jack asked.
“I think so. If this works, then I want to fix up the Assaultron line next. I checked over it last night and it seems to be in good shape. It just needs lubrication and a few bolts tightening and a few other things adjusting and it also needs cleaning and the conveyors checking over.”
“Not much then,” Gemma commented.
“We could have that production line up and running by the end of the week.”
“What about the Gutsy line?” Veronica asked. “I noted that we have far more parts for those than anything else.”
“Correct, but unfortunately there’s a snag. For that to work, we need a direct connection with General Atomics. It’s part of their licensing agreement. Unfortunately, the link is down and there’s no way to re-establish it. I was looking at it last night. We don’t have all the manufacture data available, so we might have to build the Gutsy’s by hand.”
“That sounds bad,” Sekka said.
“It is,” Drew confirmed. “Anyway, I want to move the Sentry components into their slots ready for manufacture.”
Jack stepped forward. “I’ll help.”
“We all will,” Veronica said. “Gemma and I will deal with the heavier stuff.”
The five of them headed into the stock warehouse where they gathered the necessary components. It took a few trips, but eventually they had all the parts in their respective places ready to begin.
“Okay,” Drew said as he stepped behind the terminal. “According to the system, all components are in place. All we need to do is start the process.” He looked up at the others, then to Veronica who was once more standing next to the kill switch. “Kinda glad that most of it is automated.”
Drew looked through all the warnings, making sure there wasn’t anything critical. It was the same warnings as before which he wasn’t too concerned about. He just had to make sure no one was near the line while in operation and that someone had their finger on the emergency stop button, which there was.
He cracked his knuckles. “Veronica, are you ready to do a second test run and build ourselves a Sentry robot?”
“Let’s do it,” she said.
He did a quick check of the settings, and decided to put the speed from ‘high’ to ‘lowest’. He didn’t need it built quickly, and the slower it went, the less wear and tear there would be. There was also less chance of something going wrong, or if it did, it wouldn’t tear the whole line to pieces.
Satisfied that everything was finally ready, he input the command and they all watched and listened as the line hummed back into life and began its operation.
The group watched as the machine slowly constructed a single Sentry bot. As the pieces were moved into place, robotic arms would come out to either weld or rivet them into place, all while it moved along the conveyor. Separate parts were built separately, before they were all grabbed by large arms and moved into position, constructing the final form of the Sentry bot at the end of the line. Then, with the robot constructed, a tiny little arm plugged itself into the processor and began to input its basic programming before it closed the access panel, finishing the construction.
“Is that it?” Gemma asked. “It seems way too easy.”
Drew glanced at her. “What? Worried it’s gonna fall to pieces?”
“Kinda, yeah.”
“Well, it’s not done yet. I want to run a diagnostic on its programming to make sure it’s good, then we have to make sure it’s put together properly, and if it is we still have to activate and test its weapon systems.”
He stepped from behind the terminal and made his way over to the Sentry bot and opened the rear panel. He plugged in his Pipboy and began to run a diagnostic. It came out clean with no errors. He then made sure to enable himself as the main owner/operator.
Still, he had to use chicken wire or something similar to cover the parts that were vulnerable to EMP’s to give them extra protection. While not foolproof, it would give some extra protections. Unfortunately, that would have to wait until later.
With the programming passing the test, he began to tug and pull on various parts and components to make sure they were firm and secure.
“Looks to be all good,” he said.
Veronica moved away from the emergency stop button and made her way over to him. “I guess the next step is armaments testing, right?”
“I suppose that would be a good idea,” he agreed.
“Where do you plan on doing it?”
“Outside in the parking lot will be adequate. For now, though, I feel like cracking open an old Gwinnet Stout.”
“Sounds like fun,” Veronica said.
Jack scratched the back of his head. “Can you Greenclaws even drink alcohol anymore?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
Gemma walked over. “There is one way to find out.”
“You mean have a drink?”
“Sure,” she said. “Been a while since I had a good drink.”
“I don’t think you should risk it,” Drew said. “Perhaps it’s time you paid Sarah a visit. She could run some tests, find out what you can eat and drink.”
“That does sound like a good idea,” Gemma said.
“It is a good idea,” Veronica agreed. “Been having this pain in my left knee. Annoys the heck out of me.”
“Should we all go?” Sekka asked. “Maybe we should go one by one and not together. Sarah is still afraid of us and all three of us going down might spook her.”
“Agreed,” Drew said, looking at Veronica. “Since you have a dodgy knee, you wanna go first?”
“Sure.”
Drew looked over at Gemma. “I’ll see you this afternoon, then.”
“I’ll be with Kiki,” she said.
He looked to Jack and Sekka who were standing side by side and smiled. It was nice to see how easy the two were with each other. “I’ll see you two later as well.”
“See you this afternoon,” Jack said.
They all stepped off of the factory floor and then parted ways, with Gemma heading to the dispatch warehouse, Jack and Sekka heading to wherever it was they were going, and Drew and Veronica making their way to the nurse’s office.
Drew felt a modicum of worry and fear as he saw Bek leaving the nurse’s office. She looked over at him, then at Veronica before she stomped off.
Veronica was confused. “What was that about?”
“Let’s go find out,” Drew said as he began to hurry.
As he pushed the door open, Sarah’s head snapped over to him, fear in her eyes. It was clear that Bek hadn’t been there to make friends.
He stepped inside. “Everything okay?” he asked.
Sarah looked away. “Everything is fine.”
She jumped again as Veronica peeked her head inside.
“It doesn’t look like everything’s fine,” Drew said.
Veronica ducked under the door and squeezed inside. “Bek isn’t giving you trouble is she?”
“No, no.”
“Tell us if she is,” Veronica said. “I’ll give her a good slap and put her in her place. No one messes with my friends.”
Sarah clenched her jaw as she looked down at the floor.
“What did she say?” Drew asked softly.
The doctor cleared her throat before speaking. “I sent Suzy out to go fetch some of that cleaning fluid so I could sterilize a few surfaces. That’s when she came in. She threatened me. Told me how easy it would be to kill me and how no one would ever know.”
Veronica sat down on the floor. “Maybe I should stay here with you for the time being. At least until Lotte and the rest find somewhere else to live.”
Drew shook his head. “I don’t see that happening for a while.”
Sarah sat down on a chair. “So, why are you um… here?”
Drew answered. “We thought that it would be a good idea for you to give one of the Greenclaws a once-over. Get to know a little about their bodies. We want to know what they can eat and drink, any health issues, that kind of thing.”
“I can do a basic checkup, though I don’t know how much good it will do. For more than that, I honestly need more equipment.”
“From the hospital, I assume?” Drew guessed.
“That’s not a problem, is it?”
“Not really. Though with those Brotherhood types wandering around it might be more dangerous than normal.”
“I could take her,” Veronica offered. “Just like last time.”
Drew noticed a small smile creep onto Sarah’s lips. “Yeah, that might be fun.”
Veronica looked at Drew. “When is a good time to go?”
“Tomorrow,” Drew told them. “The sooner the better. I should also ask Jack about making some armor for you and the others. I don’t expect him to be able to do it alone, so he’ll need some assistance. That’s something to think about for later, though.”
“We could all definitely do with some extra protection,” Veronica agreed.
“He used to love making clothes and armor and stuff,” Drew mused. “He saw it as a challenge. Hasn’t really touched it since Paulson.”
“Here’s his chance to get back into it,” Veronica said before cupping her bountiful chest. “Would be nice to finally be able to put these things away. You all keep staring at them and it’s irritating.”
“Sorry,” Drew said before steering the conversation back to the hospital. “I suggest that you head off early tomorrow and I’ll have some Gutsies go with you. Maybe even the Sentry bot we just built. I also want you to take at least one other Greenclaw with you, someone we can trust.”
“I might take Sekka,” Veronica suggested. “She’s big and friendly.”
“Perfect. Just make sure no one follows you.”
“Understood.”
Drew turned on his heels. “I’m going to go over the rest of the production lines. See what needs to be done.”
“Want company?” Veronica asked.
He glanced back. “You stay here with Sarah.”
“I can do that.”
“If Bek comes back, tell me.”
“If she comes back, then she’ll have a few new scars,” Veronica promised.
Drew nodded before he left.
He had been anticipating problems when Charlotte and the others had appeared on their doorstep. It was an issue he didn’t want to have to deal with but knew it was likely he would have to at some point.
He just hoped that it didn’t interfere with his work. All of their lives depended on him getting all the lines up and running and nothing, even a spoiled brat like Rebecca, could stand in the way of that.