As it turned out this facility produced a lot of different things. Its main production line was for a sort of family car but it also had small production setups for a wide range of other products. Synthetic tires, bespoke motorcycles, parts and repairs for trucks. It also produced fuel for vehicles in the local area in the form of Fusion Cores. I was also the proud owner of over a hundred of the things and I nearly started screaming when Scott informed me what exactly they were.

Nuclear Batteries. Rechargeable SOMEHOW Nuclear Batteries. And I had a 'only somewhat broken' Nuclear Reactor I had somehow just walked past. The thing was the size of a double decker bus, coated in Ant Queen guts and my insane employee had turned it on before remarking. 'Making an odd sound to be honest'. I had demanded he shut the blasted thing down and he told me it would take him about a day to do that and I almost shot him.

Apparently, the reactor had enough residual material for the next twenty-four years but without new fissile material I would not be able to recharge any fusion cores in storage. Scott had even pulled out a geiger counter that had clicked like crazy and proclaimed that everything was perfectly safe!

This was not my understandable ancestral apprehension about nuclear power that was making me pace around the factory ready to rip my hair out and run away. No one should be this casual about a damaged nuclear reactor!

The power was enough to get two out of the twenty 'Protectron' robots stomping about the place while I let Scott 'play around' with the others to see if he could get them to work. The moment he found out I was telling the truth and had secured the site he had practically begged for the job. Expecting some negotiation to take place. I had lowballed an offer of forty caps a day and he had accepted then and there on the condition he would get to work with the robots and machines as much as he wanted.

When he had explained that the facility's security functioned by giving clearance to anyone who had a badge with a microchip inside of it. I had made a concerted effort to search everywhere for the badges and collect them together. I of course made sure to give Scott one and put one on myself. They were blank with space for a nameplate and an actual placeholder section for the company name.

Clearly the automated security had not yet been set up when the bombs had dropped. That also meant any bugs in the system. Considering that we were dealing with vacuum tubes that could be literal bugs. Would not have been ironed out.

Unable to relax with ARMAGEDDON in the basement I spent my time taking inventory of everything I found. There was an abundance of stationery and clipboards around the place. I even found enough paper to write it all down with. Even with Scott's instance that the facility was in a great condition I did not have any real hope of getting the factory running.

Not to mention that with the roads in such a sorry state I would struggle to sell many cars at all. I was told that there was a mostly functional road between Canterbury and Rivet city. The route that Wolfgang had avoided because of its roundabout nature. But I did not know how well a civilian family car would do on a 'mostly functional' road.

If I wanted to sell cars, I would need to build roads. If I wanted to build roads, I would need workers, equipment, capital, security forces. It was just not a viable market. Not to mention that the factory needed to replenish its supplies. This was just one part of a logistics network that had been bombed to oblivion. I just had to make the most capital possible with what I had here and now and then discover what I could offer the market long term later.

Both the R&D building and the side factories had machine shops that. Now that I had some protection and enough caps and supplies to last me a few weeks I decided to address my damaged computation orb.

If I was in the empire, I would dump the thing into a scrap bin to be recycled but here I obviously did not have that option. I settled down at a clean workbench and brought over tools that would work on the intricate mechanisms of the computation orb. I had done more then my fair share of maintenance on computation orbs in my years of service to the Empire. There was however, a world of difference between understanding how to repair something and how to rebuild components for it. Or even building a new one.

I should have carried a second backup. Even a single core type 13 orb would give me an incredible advantage here. I had carried with me an empty notebook I found in the offices in the upper floors and a few pencils. It was the sort that had a blank page on the right and lines for writing on the left. Perfect for what I had in mind.

I began the process of carefully taking apart the device. Taking care to record a description of the orb and every component removed as well as recording its dimensions and label. Eventually I would have a document showing exactly where every component went. As well as the dimensions of the components.

Several of the internal mechanisms had melted together or warped. It was incredible the thing worked as well as it did. I then began the slow process of carefully heating, bending, hammering and shaving away at the delicate components in order to get them somewhat back into the right shape.

Sadly, the bridge harmoniser. The section of the orb that connected the mana between the alpha and beta cores, was destroyed. I did not think I was responsible for that but the main gear had cracked in half when I tried to correct a bend in it. That left me with what was effectively two single core orbs in a compact package. Without the harmoniser effect casting two spells at a time would take a lot of time and effort that a battlefield simply did not allow.

I carefully put away the broken components and reassembled what I had. The quick battery of spells I ran though both cores was worrying. I could get about fifty KT's of power out of the alpha core and almost seventy out of the beta core. Considering the beta core was much more damaged than the alpha core I concluded that I had no idea what I was doing. It was well beyond a civilian orb but the most basic fielded computation orb in the Empires military service was rated at two hundred KT's. It could also be pushed up to around two hundred and twenty at only a minor risk of turning into a hand grenade.

The type 97 was meant to be well over three hundred KT's. I was sure my repairs were done well. Both cores were running smoothly so why was the power output so low? I simply did not have the mind for this kind of work. I was not an expert in computation devices. I would have to find someone who could make replacement components for the harmoniser and see if I could repair it later.

Once I was too frustrated to work on the damn orb anymore, I went to check on Scott only to find he had found a clean mattress somewhere and was sleeping next to the damaged nuclear reactor. I was not a massive idiot and used my orb to reinforce myself for a run back to Canterbury before nightfall. I was not going to sleep in the same building as a damn bomb just waiting to blow up. I paid for a single room at the motel and tried not to think about just what a room filled with red candles and a heart shaped bed meant.

The next day I paid for wagon that I could pull along by hand. Normally it would be attached to the back of a brahmin but I could drag it along while empty even without a strength enhancing formula. When I was out of sight of the town, I began to work some spells into the two cores and began sprinting over to my factory. I must have looked ridiculous running along dragging a cart that bounced around and was clearly intended to move only at the sedate pace of a brahmin.

When I reached the factory, I cast another healing formula on my chest. I did not know if I had broken my ribs again from all the running but it certainly felt that way. Ignoring the pain in my chest I took the time to drag out all the human corpses, ant corpses, eggs and the rest of the waste that would just get in the way.

I would need to hire someone with a chisel to get rid of the ant spit adhered to the floor and walls later. There was quite the collection of caps, drugs, armour and weapons on the bodies and bones that I put aside as I thew everything else into one of the empty skips outside. Magical formula to increase strength serving me well.

The manual labour was mindless enough to allow me a lot of time to think. I was unsure when but in my first life I remembered something about small mopeds. Cheap motorcycles. Being used extensively in developing countries for the wide utility and reliability they offered. They were small enough that two people could carry them reasonably and offered enough horsepower that they could drag a cart behind them. All countries needed a considerable amount of logistics to function. From modern to ancient civilisations the task of moving something from one place to another was vital.

People in poor countries might be uneducated but they were not stupid. If they had decided that small mopeds were one of the best options for them and had used them extensively then they were very likely correct about them being the most viable option. The factory did have a workshop that produced electric motorcycles. I spent some time flicking though decayed technical manuals and looking at the things in stock.

I was lucky in the fact that there were two fully assembled bikes that ran off something called a small energy cell. There was a dozen more in various stages of assembly. I only had a limited amount of small energy cells. Most surprisingly coming from a long dead scavenger who had failed to deal with the ants.

I dragged out one of the motorcycles, or moped. I was still unsure what exactly the difference was. And plugged in the energy cells under the seat. I had never actually owned a car. I had gotten my drivers license in my first life and had driven now and then. But had never thought about it all that much. I had certainly never ridden on a motorcycle before after seeing a video of someone who had been in an accident on one of them.

I was confident that my magic would protect me and I was only going to be driving in a circle in a mostly empty car park anyway. I resigned myself to forget my first few attempts to get going on the moped and quickly formed a spell to dull the pain from falling onto my rear as the surprisingly quick bike sped off from under me.

I checked it for damage and finding none I sat more securely on it and carefully got going. The thing let out a whine as I accelerated but became very quiet when I maintained speed. After a few laps around the factory with a big grin on my face I tested riding over a loose pile of rubble and some bricks and was happy to find that the suspension had not rusted at all somehow.

On a whim I found some metal wire and tied the wagon I got to the back of the bike. It was not nearly as fun as riding it on its own but it worked and I piled some loose bricks into the wagon to see how much weight the bike could pull. It was not an exact science but I discovered it was a lot. I emptied the wagon and unhitched it with a giddy skip in my step so I could climb onto the bike again.

I made a few more laps around the factory to test just how fast I could go on the thing before I stopped before the child inside of me could convince me to keep going all day. I now had a working product to sell as well as enough supplies to make more. I would however need to find or import more parts and hire trained workers to assemble the bikes.

Before I could get back onto the bike and ride around in a circle some more, I dragged it back to the workshop and looked around. While the bike itself still functioned perfectly well it's paint had seen better days. Branding was important for a consistent and growing customer base. I walked over to a station filled with spray-paints and stencils.

I had never been all that talented in the creative department. I had learned to draw in a phase where I had considered becoming a mangaka but had never managed to become more then passible and had no real passion for that kind of thing. This was quite simple however. I picked up some of the rolls of painter's tape and turned to the bike.

I threw a few of the odd guns and pieces of armour from the dead scavengers. I made my way back to town after having a chat with Scott. We were up to six protectrons. Scott said he fixed two of them with duct tape somehow and I had encouraged him and asked if he wanted any supplies from town. It was always a good idea to reward employees doing their job and getting situated in the workplace so quickly even if they were insane and sleeping next to a reactor.

Riding up to Canterbury on a freshly painted bike with a trailer full of things to trade generated quite the crowd. With everyone's attention I was able to quite quickly sell the things I had taken with me and made some inquires for technically minded people looking for a job. After politely refusing some offers to buy my new motorcycle and promising I would have a product for sale soon. I told a dozen people who were interested in the evaluation to meet me tomorrow at my factory with clear instructions on how to avoid being shot by the security.

I picked up some boxes of .45 rounds for my SMG as well as some pure water, food and Nuka cola for Scott. I also ordered a few bedframes and mattresses to be delivered. Happy with my purchases I scooted around to the highway taking care to drag rusted out hunks of motorcycles abandoned on the roads onto the back of the trailer until it was somewhat overloaded and putter my way back to my factory.

I spent some time painting up a board to put on the front of the factory. Branding was important and if I was going to be successful in a market like this. I needed to offer a wide range of services that could be remembered by the average person and be easy to spread with word of mouth. I settled on the name White Silver Automobiles. As much as I disliked the moniker it was catchy and I knew for a fact it was effective. Word of mouth marketing was organic and would serve me the best considering the anarchistic environment. If I did mange to set up a long-term production line of motorcycles, I might even pay that Three Dog to advertise for me.

At least I did not need permissions or much paperwork at all to start a company. When I had finished propping up the new sign, I gathered all the technical manuals I could as well as my useful technical expert and began to take apart the rusted out scavenged bikes. I wanted to keep the preserved equipment in the workshop away from my exploratory education.

I spent the rest of the day learning about how to take apart, put together and repair electric bikes. There were considerable gaps in my education and when I asked how certain components worked. I quickly regretted it as Scott began to passionately explain the function of a metal tube or as he called it the 'electro-regulation bi-converter.' The last world had worked on science and magic and sometimes magical science. This world worked on pure technobabble.

Even without understanding how it worked I manged to work out what part configuration made it work. I also manged to get one bike working out of cannibalised parts from six bikes. I wrote down information I would need to determine how qualified the potential workers actually were and went to one of the smaller offices to clear it out ready for the bunk delivery.

I had taken care to order the beds from the person who owned the motel. Without any authority to rely upon to enforce the transaction. I had to know exactly where the people I did business with lived in order to enforce such contracts with a gun. So uncivilized.

It was dark by the time I was finished with my preparations. As much as I hated it, I settled down in what must have been an incredibly expensive office chair that could lean back far enough to make for a comfortable sleeping position. What kind of insane culture had micro nuclear reactors in factories?

"We might have something sir."

"You don't sound convinced."

"It's just rumours and a hunch so far. Just some of the details piqued my interest."

"Such as?"

"Report is that a thirteen-year-old girl killed a dozen men in a metro tunnel in complete darkness and was able to keep up with a caravan at a forced march for days. Her name is Tanya Von Degurechaff."

"Sounds like tall tales. You have my full confidence of course but it does not seem like all that much to me."

"That was what I thought sir. Yesterday she secured a factory that was infested with giant ants and hired a robotics expert. She also hired some more technically minded personal that she is evaluating for work in the factory. Rumour is she is attempting to restart the facility and knows exactly how to do it."

"…You have verified this?"

"Yes sir. She is working alone or if she has any accomplices other then the ones she hired after the fact they are good at staying hidden."

"You think it could actually be A3-21? A teenage girl?"

"One thing I can say for certain. She is not a teenage girl. She is highly intelligent and procedural outside of projected norms even for accelerated education. She also has a thick accent even if her pronunciation is perfect."

"Thick accent? Wait, there is no fucking… A1-12. Your hunch has priority. Even if its not A3-21 it might be… How the hell could he have even built a body? If it is Dr Braun, you are to capture him alive."

"Dr Braun sir?"

"A remote contact the Institute has worked with in the past. He went dark a few years ago after he worked with us and had access to some of our servers. Considering his… Position it's not unreasonable to assume he breached some of our security without us knowing. Gain access to any files, terminals. Anything he is recording and report it to us. We cannot allow this technology in the hands of someone who can use it."

"Understood sir."

"Slow and safe. If I am right about MY hunch then this sadistic bastard was a genius two hundred years ago. Take no risks. And find out where he constructed that body!"

"Understood sir. I will attempt to make another report in twenty-five days."

I got up early in the morning in order to get on my bike and pick up more abandoned motorcycles. Only finding three of them in a few hours before returning to the factory. I would need to place a bounty on bikes so scavengers would collect them and sell them to me. That would be more effective then trying to find them on my own.

I spent time organising the scavenged components that still seemed to be working. By my estimation I had scavenged enough working components to make two bikes. Three if I was lucky. It was good enough to test just how technically capable the applicants were. Things were about ready when the small group wandered towards the factory. It seemed like half of the people who had applied for the examination had decided not to turn up.

After ordering the group to leave their weapons in the security shack and giving them each a badge I led them to the motorcycle workshop and explained to them what I expected of them. I then led them outside and led groups in pairs into the workshop to assemble and disassemble the scavenged bikes.

Surprisingly only one pair failed to get the bike working after looking though the technical documentation. Even if the others were not technically inclined and had just followed the document that was good enough for me. Someone who could read a document and then apply that knowledge was good enough.

Sending off the people who failed the examination and escorting them out of my factory I then began to explain what I expected from the ones who had passed. I handed them contracts I had written up on a damaged typewriter and moved on to wage negotiations. I ended up hiring only three of them. Sam Yu, a young man from Ronto. Gregory Smith who had lived in the capital wasteland all his life and Jane Doe from the Commonwealth.

I had them set up the bunks in the office and then I set them to work cleaning up the factory. The next few days involved a lot of preparation. I used my new employees who seemed to be well adjusted to following the orders of a teenage girl. I was sure that all the caps I was paying them certainly helped on that front.

Rather then getting right to work on bike production I spent my time selling ant meat, eggs and other scrap to Canterbury in order to build up capital to pay for repairs and supplies. I hired some guards from town to fill in holes the ants had made and dig out the eastern facing wall to help secure my property.

I put out feelers for my bike bounty informing scavengers that I would make it public I would pay for bikes and bike components soon and they should take advantage of exclusivity to collect them. It was close to the end of the week that actual electric motorcycle production began.

I was quite proud of the finished products. They were all tested by me driving them around in circles before they would receive the final coat of paint. They were painted silver with a white stylized wing decal as well as the branding 'White Silver Automobiles' proudly displayed on the side. I started small bringing over five bikes to canterbury drawing a lot of attention.

I made a show of selling the utility of the bikes. Riding around though the town before hooking a trailer piled up with bricks and riding around pulling that with ease. I explained how the bikes required small energy cells that Scott assured me was near ubiquitous across the wastes and explained how to replace spent cells.

Pricing the bikes was difficult as I had a limited understanding of how different things were priced in the wasteland. But I wanted to promote them as a valuable prestige item as well as a useful utility. I had settled on selling them for three thousand caps expecting to sell a few of them and start some word-of-mouth discussion about the new product.

I did not expect to sell all of them within an hour. With more caps then sense I began to make plans for how to expand my production. I hired someone who claimed to be an artist and brought some paint. There were quite a few billboards that had survived the apocalypse and I wanted my bounty on bikes and bike components to be as public as possible.

The next day I had a dozen scavengers outside of my factory ready to sell me bikes they had collected. I moved over two of my workers to dismantle the bikes to find useable components while I left Jane in charge of assembling new ones.

By the time Wolfgang's caravan returned to Canterbury I had expanded my employment to a small security team in addition to Scott's robots. Scott himself had a new motorcycle that he used to move between my factory and his robot repair shop. I had reduced the bounty on scavenged bikes in an effort to stem the flood of deliveries from scavengers but that had not done all that much.

After being crushed in a bearhug from Joy and receiving a lot of kind words and encouragement for my business enterprise I settled in to spend a few hours entertaining the traders. In appreciation for everything he had done for me I gave him a good deal on a new White Silver motorcycle and asked if he could delay his trip to Rivet city for a day while I got my affairs in order. I decided to place Jane in charge while I travelled south to Rivet city.

I was making a huge risk leaving for a week or two. I was under no illusion that I had the loyalty of my employees yet and the security team I hired were well below my expectations. I had however made more caps in a week then many made in years. If I lost what I had built here I was somewhat confident that I could recover without an issue.

I left Jane with some projections for how many bikes to produce and how much she could spend on buying supplies from traders and scavengers. Surprisingly enough she wanted to go with me to Rivet city with some of the bikes in order to sell them there. I did not like the idea of carrying extra bikes though the metro tunnels that Wolfgang used however so I told her that would have to wait for another time.

Caps, like coins. Had one major weakness. Large amounts of them were very heavy. Paper money was superior in every way and I did not dare to dream of a credit card. Annoyingly the only comfortable backpack I could find that fit me was a faded pink with a stylized cat on the back. After seeing me walking around with it Joy had actually screamed and gushed over how cute I looked as I wished for death.

When we set out south to Rivet city, we only had my bike. Wolfgang choosing to leave his with the factory. I had attached a cart to the back of my bike and having it chug along at walking speed while holding a modest amount of goods to trade would barely be drain the battery at all. I had offered to pay for help carrying it though the metro tunnels but everyone had refused saying that they were happy to help me out and how impressed they were with the bike.

An entire trade caravan equipped with them could make trade along routes that were relatively flat much quicker than pack animal caravans. I was not surprised to find out that Wolfgang had seen his fair share of bikes and cars but he made a point that they were very rare and often custom pieces. More often military vehicles rather then being used for commercial logistics.

My suspicion that the reason factories or companies like my own were not more widespread proved to be correct. I had assumed that the lack of industry was entirely because of the capital investment required to establish a production line and then the cost of security required to maintain it. No one with enough capital to try was willing to take the risk. The people that did have the capital simply made security companies or relied on existing markets and industries rather than entrepreneurship.

Considering my military experience making a security company was simply an inevitability. I would need loyal and well-trained security sooner rather than later. Speaking of the need for security. The moment we reached the metro entrance Wolfgang called the caravan to a halt and let out a pained sigh.

I shut off my bike and moved over to him to take a look at what was going on and found myself looking down at a hastily assembled raider camp overlooking the staircase. Even this far away I could see at the middle of the camp a crude suit of the power armour I had seen on the brotherhood of steel around the Washington memorial.

"Well. Looks like we are going to have to go around." Wolfgang muttered kicking up a plume of dust in frustration. Going around meant I would be unable to get to the capital building where I had buried some of my equipment. It also meant that Tommy's family and Underworld would not have access to trade caravans.

Giving in to bandits was unacceptable. It would be surrendering any chance the people of the capital wasteland had to experience a free market and the prosperity it would bring. A direct assault would simply not work. They had a better position and that suit of power armour would likely tip the battle in the raiders favour. It had to be destroyed or disabled before the fight began.

Approaching with the caravan would also lead to an unacceptable number of causalities in the caravan. Honestly letting anyone in the caravan fight at all was simply a waste of valuable human resources. This encampment could be dislodged without wasting resources I just needed to deal with it myself.

"Keep everyone here Wolfgang. If your men approach you will ruin my cover and get people killed."

"Tanya? What are you talking about? What are you going to do?!" I took off my backpack and left it with my motorcycle.

"I am going to deal with the raider camp. Do not follow me until I give you the all-clear signal." He sputtered some nonsense that any sane man would when someone my age ran towards a deadly fight but I was already jogging in a roundabout path to the camp. I glanced back to watch Wolfgang holding Joy back from following me.

Good, I did not want to worry about untrained civilians getting in my way. I fed magic into my computation orb and began to prepare a formula. Not having the chance to cast magic this complex in weeks I felt a grin spread across my face and supressed the urge to giggle. The feeling of unleashing magic was indescribable. Like scratching an itch that you had suffered for years or flying free for the first time.

I had to try not to have too much fun.

AN: Tanya zipping around on an electric motorbike with a grin on her face brings me happiness.

BieberLover69 and Amon34: Both requested a change that I have made to the story. I have added translations to the last chapter if you want to check them out.

BieberLover69: "I'm not fond of it when authors include somebody else along with the MC in getting crossed. I feel like it diminishes whatever struggle the MC is going through (which given general fanfic tendencies is already not a lot) and thus makes the story more boring as the MC no longer has to try and deal with the other setting's characters if that's they're inclination."

I gave this a lot of consideration when I was thinking about how and why to include Visha in the story. I had a set role planned out for her but I was unsure if I was going to include her in the story. Eventually I decided I did not like the flow of the alternate storyline that her exclusion would necessitate.

Paradox: "When you do post on SpaceBattles what is your username?"

I will post around the same time as I upload the story here! My username is FallQM.

L4 of the WEST: "we now have the possibility of an unknown number 203 and US volunteer expeditionary mages lose across the wasteland and who to say their arrival was constricted to the capital wasteland."

Just imagine the chaos that could cause in the precarious political situation out west : )

krahe99: "Aw yea, it's Viktoriya! Loyal Jurgen to Tanya's Cain. Also, annoyed smol Tanya is hella adorable"

They are very fun to write and Tanya is always adorable no matter how much she hates that fact!

Landon Sorenson: Thanks for your comment Landon! Honestly seeing people enjoying me writing for fun is more than enough payment! Hope your situation improves.

XM312: "Just the hints of the future plot lines weaving together makes me eager to see how Tanya handles things."

Thanks for your comment. I am trying to strike something of a balance between making the readers aware of things going on elsewhere in the wasteland that are important and focusing on Tanya.