Chapter Seven - Spring Cleaning

  "The Baby Ice Initiative is a new childcare policy wherein parents can bring their children to one of our secure facilities where they'll be given toys and training and an early education in order to turn them into productive members of society!"

  --The Baby Ice Initiative, webpage, 2034

  ***

  After sending Lucy off to school early the next morning, I found myself very much tempted to call everything off and to just go back to bed.

  Bed soft and warm. World cold and hard.

  But no. I could only excuse so much laziness in myself, and there was some shit I had to get done. The first of that was looking over my messages. Nothing from Crisis Mode, so I had no idea if she'd received my reply at all, but that was okay.

  The others... I'd gotten a confirmation from Princess and Knight, and one from Shy, as well as a few negative responses. I wasn't surprised by those, but they still disappointed a little.

  Tankette said that she and her husband were preparing to move, so they were quite busy and she wouldn't be able to attend, not for a few days. Gros Baton had something. Grasshopper sent me... a three-page long email, telling me about her day, her week, a few stories, some advice about... investment? I had to start scanning through it before I found her polite refusal at the bottom, but she wished me and the others well and said that she was going to cheer us on.

  From anyone else, I'd have taken that with a grain of salt, but I believed it when it came from her.

  Cause Player--who was a long-shot--said that he was busy, and Sam-O-Ray hadn't replied at all, nor had Crackshot.

  There was one surprise in the bunch. Hedgehog said that he'd be at my place by 0600 tomorrow.

  So, the away team was going to be myself, Gomorrah, Shy, Princess and Knight, and then Hedgehog.

  Five samurai and a plus-one. Not a ton, but also enough potential firepower to pucker-up the assholes of just about anyone that wanted to stop us.

  "Hey, Myalis, think you can do me a favour?" I asked.

  I feel like that's all I do.

  "Uh-huh," I said. "Can you grab the information we have on Quebec so far and like... package it up for me? Something easy to read through? Like a quick summary thing. Then send it to Gom and Shy and Princess, Knight and Hedgehog. Just want to keep them all on the same page, more or less, you know?"

  I think I see what you mean. Yes, I can compile something like that, though there isn't much to work with.

  "That's fine," I said. It would at least set a baseline for the others.

  I wandered around the house, looking for clean-enough clothes to put on, then I sighed and found myself distracted by the mess. We really needed a cleaning bot or something. That's what the rich folk had, right? Wasn't I rich enough, yet?

  For the next forty minutes, I picked up dishes all over and chucked them into the dishwasher, then I picked dirty clothes off the floor and tossed it all into the washing machine in one large batch. If shit got messed up in there, then that was someone else's problem.

  "Daniel! You're in charge of putting the clothes in the dryer!" I shouted.

  "Don't wanna!" he shouted back.

  I paused for a moment. "If you don't, I'm hanging you off the side of the building and I won't pick you back up for a few days."

  That would do it.

  Right, what else did I need to prep? A day felt like a lot until it was all I had left. Right, I'd be some ways from home, but I'd have the Bastion with me. So I wasn't going to be entirely out in the wilds of Quebec without plumbing and a safe place to sleep.

  I decided to go check on the ship, just in case. There were some storage closets onboard that were still empty. I found myself with a broom, pushing out a layer of dust and dried-up mud off the grated floors. Dammit, why was today cleaning day? I hated cleaning.

  Since I had some storage room, there was no reason not to use it. I grabbed some of the more commonly-used tools from the garage right next to the Bastion and stowed them away for later. There was a chance that I'd need something and I didn't want to spend points on a tool I already owned.

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  Then I went back upstairs and grabbed some spare clothes. Just a few shirts and pants and underwear, in case I needed it. Better to have spares and not need them. There was also storage room for food. Not made for it, but like, I could stuff some non-perishables away, right?

  Only we were almost out.

  I frowned as I opened every cupboard in the kitchen and didn't find nearly as much as I might have hoped to. I stared at a can on maple-flavour flavoured beans. I supposed that could be something, but it wasn't ideal.

  So, I went onto one of those shopping apps, spoofed the app so that it wouldn't know my relative tax-bracket to upcharge me on everything, then I did a bit of quick online shopping for grub. Mostly it was snacks and pre-made, pre-packaged food.

  I paid a little extra to have it drone-delivered instead of delivered by a gig-worker. I just didn't need someone weird snooping in on my place at the moment, and Myalis could delete any footage the drone captured before the delivery company resold it.

  Once that arrived like, fifty minutes later, I took some time to load it all up into the Bastion. I even bought some plastic silverware and stuffed that away as well.

  Then I dusted off the inside of the ship, checked the filters, ran some quick maintenance checks, and finally topped up some fluids that were getting somewhat middle-ish.

  I wasn't a big mechanic, but I could do that much well enough. Then it was back to work on the Nyanzerfaust.

  Taking it out prematurely to that last event was cool and all, but it had been a little sloppy. I still had some parts to replace. I'd have rather do things nice and slow, but nice and slow wouldn't be ready for tomorrow morning. So instead I helped the repair drone I had disassemble the leg then hooked new parts into place.

  I might have felt a little useless if the drone didn't slide back on occasion and move so that I basically had to hold tools in place for it, or maneuver a part around so that it could be assembled properly.

  It wasn't perfect, but a few hours in we were closing the mech up again, and I hopped into the cockpit to run some quick checks.

  The gash I'd cut into the ceiling with my Void Terminus was gone, the screens that had been burned and cut through were replaced by shiny new ones. The mech even had a bit of that new-car-smell that came from fresh new plastics.

  I plugged myself into the Nyanzerfaust, then ran a full diagnostics. All guns were operating, all targeting systems were green, all of the sensors were reporting back correctly. A few tests confirmed it all.

  Still, I had the automated parts of the garage unhook and drop the mech back onto its feet, then I took it for a walk around the parking garage. I did a bit of jogging, some crouching, then a few leaps. I was limited in what I could test by the environment, of course, but everything I did test came back looking pretty good.

  If I didn't know where to look, I wouldn't be able to tell that the mech had ever been damaged at all.

  "Okay," I said as I returned it. "Let's reload all of the guns, then call this one ready," I said as I clambered out of it. I looked over to my second mech. The MEOW had never really been extensively used out in the field.

  That might change in the next couple of days.

  I had no idea how bad things were around Quebec, but if it came to a fight, then I wanted to be in the biggest, toughest mech I had... if I was fighting people.

  Against the Antithesis, I think that anything with more firepower was probably the way to go. People had guns, though, and guns were dangerous.

  I was almost surprised when I looked at the time and realized how late it was. Lucy was going to be back from school soon, though she had to take a taxi back, so it wouldn't be that fast.

  I washed up, wiping grease and oil off my hands and then grimacing at how much of a mess I'd made of my pants. Well, whatever. We had a big washing machine for a reason.

  Now to go see if I had to hang Daniel off the side of the building or not... I was betting on having to do it, because there was no way anyone would actually listen and do anything in this house.

  ***