SCMR Chpt 86

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==Chapter 86 - Self Configuring Modular Robot==
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"Visiting Hours are Fifteen hundred to seventeen hundred, Monday through...
...Friday and Noon to eighteen hundred on Saturday, Ma'am." The desk nurse said it crisply and harshly.
"I. Don't. Care." The visitor in question is wearing an LCN Admiral's uniform with the nametag 'Li', this nametag matches to an almost-ageless looking face framed by short-cut black hair, the features marred only slightly under light makeup by the scarring from violent decompression sometime in the past. "I'm here to see my Baroness, and you're going to let me see her." Alicia Li's tone didn't waver from the cool, conversational tone trained into officers who spend a lot of time on intercoms working with crew.
"I will not!!" the nurse scowled, "Leave or I will summon Security."
"Lady, I am Security." Alicia's tone didn't waver, "So, either unlock the door or I will have it unlocked. Give me the room number or I will take it from you."
The defiant guardian of the recovery unit wound up watching in frustrated helplessness, as the Admiral's rank, and medals, along with a set of codewords, opened the security door, and the Officer of the Day escorted her through twenty minutes later.
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"I will rip them to shreds!!!" Elizabeth Ngo howled, coming off the recovery bed trailing IV needles and her catheter tube in a storm of invective flowing through four languages and no less than a dozen subcultures.
"I don't think that will be necessary or appropriate, Milady." Alicia Li was still ice-calm, "A simple memorandum and authorization is sufficient, Legal can have the charges in front of a magistrate in-"
"NO, it's not!!" Liz stormed verbally, but the discomfort of the tubes and her embarrassment at her hospital-gown bareness slowed her down. "Does Patrick know?"
"He...they kept it from him."
"I will hang their heads on the ****** wall. How bad is the damage?"
"Estimate is fifteen billlion in warranty work and lost production time." Li said unhappily.
"And the customers?" Lizzie scowled, "Are we going to ****** lose IOTO over this??"
"Ms. Whyte believes she can negotiate to keep the IOTO and Lockheed contracts but..."
"But." Lizzie's scowl deepened, "In the meantime, the Firm's reputation takes a beating. There is NO guarantee we'll keep those contracts, and there are a dozen or more multi-billion kroner ships on long range deployment with unreliable life support systems that somehow managed to be bribed past inspection with YOUR department, made by my family's company."
"I have already prepared a statement taking full responsibility for-", Alice begun to say.
"Oh, the ****** you will!" Elizabeth's temper was back, "You. did. your. job. or we wouldn't be speaking. It's those arseholes in Department of Supply and Requisitions who...Took the kickback. I want the names of the embezzlers, Li, each and every one of them, I want..." she fumed, scowled, "I want them made into an example. One that will have business school graduates and civil servants pissing themselves every night for the next two hundred years in terror."
"I'm afraid you don't have that kind of power." Li reminded her.
"Yeah, but it happens that I know someone who does." she told her
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