July, Monday 20th, 2048

A giant metal beetle with a giant spade in its hands was digging ditches for the foundation of the helipad tower. At the controls yours truly of course. The fabricator in the base was currently fabricating two repair drones for construction work, which would “repair” the foundation into existence.

Suddenly, I saw movement in the woods nearby. A closer look revealed a Type One. It marched up towards the entrance of my base. The Avian Eliminator on the roof of my Mack was normally reserved for shooting Type Six drones, but this time I would make an exception. “Elya, one salvo from the AE!”

BRAAAP

The Type One dropped dead. It was not significantly armored, even with a simple spear you might be able to kill it. Ten easy points.

More machine bodies were moving through the woods, Type Four mecha-squids this time. They had quite tough plate armor. I remembered an incursion two months ago, where Type Four Macks captured by me and hostile Fours had been pounding each other’s armor with futility.

But their tentacles were more vulnerable, and destroying their eyes would instantly kill them. It was time to try and refine my tactics. “Elya, can you instruct our Fours to prioritize hitting eyes and the base of the enemies’ tentacles? Also, deprioritize enemies that have less than three working tentacles.”

Certainly. It will be interesting to watch your blundering in tactics development

Ten enemy Macks were approaching six of mine at the base entrance. I waited until they were bunching up close to my units, then I came up behind them, spade raised. As I hoped, they only had eyes for the threat ahead of them.

I took careful aim and slashed at a rear tentacle. The mechanical limb was ripped off and sent flying. The mechanical amputee fell over and slid down the mountain slope a few meters, just right for me to slash at another tentacle with my oversized spade. This time my aim was better and the tentacle was clearly shorn off at the first joint.

Following my own prioritization order, I let it be and went after the enemies at the base entrance. Despite being short-handed, my guards did well. While they had already lost one of their own, three enemy Macks were more or less disabled. That left seven to five odds for the Macks, but not for long.

I lifted one of the Macks at its rear tentacles and smashed it down like a flail on another Type Four. Their armor held, but something broke inside both Macks. They stirred only weakly afterwards. That left five vs. five.

Finally, two of them decided I was the more dangerous target after all and went after me. I pinned one of them down, but the other one managed to evade me and attack from my flank. I struggled to kick it away with the legs of Herbie, but to no avail.

Fortunately, my surviving Fours had superior numbers by now. Five of them versus the three Macks that had not switched their attention to me. They disabled those quickly and moved against the two Macks harassing me. Caught from behind, the enemy Fours were disabled by spikes rammed into the base of their tentacles.

I wanted to keep the merely damaged ones for experiments, so I ordered my units to stop their attacks.

There is minor damage in leg number two on the left side.

“Can we still use it without aggravating the damage?”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Yes, as long as you do not put too much load on it. I will temporarily modify Herbie’s movement routines. In layman’s terms, we will be limping.

Next I crippled the surviving enemy units to the point they could not fight back or run away anymore, then stacked them near the base entrance. I maneuvered Herbie backwards into the base entrance, then unmounted and grabbed my armor and rifle. My next station was the big fabber in the base, where I ordered ten new Type Fours, Vanguard Edition. The focus on weak points had proven effective in the fight, so Elya and I made it part of the standard software.

Since the last count, you have eliminated or captured one type One and ten Fours.

New balance… One token and 1472 points

There might still be a Type 21 around, but I figured there was time for an experiment. “Elya, I need something like a long cattle prod. Something I can use to disrupt the electronics of the Macks without throwing EMP grenades.”

There is such a device in the General Class 0, no unlocking required. Blueprint price is 50 points.

“Yes please.”

Purchased: Electric Cattle Prod (blueprint)

Price… 50 points

New balance… One token and 1422 points

“Print one out please.”

A few minutes later, I walked up to one of the crippled Macks. I gave it a prod here, stroked its hull with the sparking prod there and soon Elya displayed it as successfully subverted.

In the next Mack, the same approach led to the eye wildly flickering and then it burst.

Interesting. It seems you somehow provoked a short in its CPU.

The third one simply went dark, the fourth was successfully hijacked again. At this point, I separated the hacked ones physically from the big scrap heap and had Elya parade several of my Macks past them.

A Type Four in Vanguard livery provoked a hostile reaction in the hacked ones. Elya and I could access its cyberbrain and see how it worked. Both image recognition and an electronic friend-or-foe detection system showed a hostile unit. The image recognition had been improved over earlier versions and was harder to fool.

All enemy Macks I checked shared an identification key for the electronic system though, so perhaps a combination of correct appearance and correct electronic ID would still fool them?

I printed one of my Type 1R units with the colors of the original Type One and set it to fake the ID from the hacked ones. It took special instructions for my own Type Fours not to attack it on sight.

But the FOF recognition in the hostile Macks showed it as friendly to the hacked enemy units. Type Fours in Vanguard livery were still recognized as hostile based on the visuals, even with the correct ID.

With that, my experiment was complete. I had my own Type Four bots poke out the eyes of the non-converted enemy ones. These would eventually be recycled.

I also ordered one of my explosive “anti tank dog” Fours that had worked so well back in May. If my infiltration trick would work again now, a quick victory might be possible against the next Twenty-One. So I sent the 1R seeking the surroundings for more Mack units, especially in the direction the enemy Fours had come from. It did indeed detect a Twenty-One several hundred meters downstream, with a few Fours around it.

I launched a Spectracopter for better observation but otherwise sent only the 1R and the explosive “Type Four” with the big shaped charge inside. This time I kept the 1R at a greater distance, while the metaphorical anti tank dog advanced. Like three months ago, it could approach unmolested.

BOOOM

One of the Type Fours nearby had two of its tentacles ripped off. A small tree fell over, fortunately it did not look like I had started a forest fire. As the 1R was still not recognized as hostile, I sent it closer to inspect the eye of the Twenty-One. It was shattered and dark.

I was not entirely sure which role smaller Mack units had in calling in reinforcements, so I sent six of my Type Fours to kill their enemy counterparts. It was a very one-sided fight. All that was left to do was the cleanup of the dead enemies. The Type Twenty-One was too large for me to carry off. But killing it had given me five hundred points. It would also be unable to open a gate for reinforcements.

Congratulations. You killed another high value target that might have paved the way for even more dangerous units.

New balance… One token and 2002 points

Over the rest of the day, I repaired Herbie’s bum leg and updated the software on all of my Macks to use a variety of the enemy’s FOF detection system. Running on a different channel so we could still mess with the original system.