Thursday, August 27th, 2048

I had finally gotten around to repairing the Type 21 sitting in the river bed near Styx base. Of course with various safety measures. Among other things, anything in the eye-computer that had to do with the teleportation sequence needed active authorization through Elya. On top of that, I had installed a remote triggered self destruct charge. And telemetry to measure what was going on in the thing.

My plan was to mess with the next Mack emergence and try to redirect a few of their units here, both as an experiment and because they would be useful as raw material. I did not have an outgoing teleport portal so far, which meant I would have to play around with the setting of the gate in the Type 21 and hope I could catch something at all.

Now the modifications on the Type 21 were complete, and I had to wait until the Macks did try something again. In the meantime, I set my build drones to work again. I was building a two-story house on top of the entry of Styx Base.

Octagonal in shape, it echoed the architecture of the tower that supported the helipad. The drones were building the ceiling over the first story now, after that it would be masonry with big granite blocks again and finally a flat roof with a crenelated parapet. Maybe a smaller, second helipad on top where I could park the Variocopter and keep the bigger helipad free. I was still a bit undecided about that part.

While I was musing about architecture, Elya advised me that there was hyperspace activity again. The Macks started another attack on Victoria, apparently from the same region where I had detected them last time. So SHOCKS had not managed to clear them out yet.

I walked down to the river with Herbie, a dozen of my normal Type Fours and two Type 4AE following me. I parked Herbie fifty meters away from the Type 21, surrounded it with the Fours and started experimenting. Somehow the gate in the Type 21 had to interact with the place that was sending the smaller Macks.

My first attempts were to wait for a hyperspace pulse from the enemy base and then somehow grab whatever was transmitted at the moment. That proved entirely useless.

Next, I tried to actively initiate a transfer by pulsing the gate on my side. Now I got a resonance that seemed to depend on the orientation of my Mack. It was strongest when the opening of the gate was in line with the vector from the “sender” base. So I made the Twenty-One turn around accordingly and gave final instructions to Elya. “Try to block enemy units with our own Fours while you try to hack them. When that fails, kill them.”

Next, we ramped the power for the gate up all the way. At the peak, the telemetry Elya was monitoring showed a massive power drain from the huge capacitors in the Twenty-One’s

gate and a Type Four emerged. It had barely stepped out of the bigger machine when I gave it the electro-hacking treatment. One easy new minion.

The capacitors needed a minute to recharge, before I could make the next attempt. This time nothing happened, but on the next try another Four emerged. This one was a bit more difficult, but my Type Four bodyguards blocked its way and in a second attempt Elya managed to convert it.

It was very nice that I could control the influx of enemy units, so we always could be sure of not being outnumbered. That dubious pleasure would be left to the Macks today.

Over the next hour, I lured in eighteen more Fours, of which I had to destroy four because they resisted hacking. A fifth one died from Elya’s hacking attempt. Then one rather flimsy looking unit with numerous eyes and antennae appeared. It collapsed as soon as the taser kissed it.

Oops. That one had more delicate circuits. By the way, it was a Type Thirteen, a recon unit that is said to have very good sensors.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

After that, a machine with eight legs and four more limbs each with a spike and an eye

came through the gate. It was quickly taken over though.

A Type Seventeen. The ambush predator among the Macks. Likes to jump you from unexpected places.

“Park it over there.” I pointed vaguely in the direction of Herbie.

Elya and I had been farming Macks for over an hour now, as MMO players might say, and the “emerge” part of an emergence rarely lasted longer than that. I decided to try and catch one more, then I would be done for today.

Of course, my last intended victim turned out not to be an ordinary unit. Instead a humanoid shape stepped out of the gate. It was one of the Mack “Magical Girls”. She looked human enough at first glance, but the rigid plating of her skirt and her bra made it clear that this was not your wholesome girl next door.

I subvocalized to Elya “All units attack, but don’t hit the head!”

I wanted to take that head intact. Which did not keep me from electro-tasering her. It did not overpower her, but caused some noticeable glitches. Miss Mack twitched but managed to grind out “Flame Arr..Arr…” She lifted her hand and fired three flaming bolts from her palm at me, before one of my Fours punched a spike through her elbow.

Diving to the side, I still caught two bolts on my armor but managed to evade the third. Even hit only twice, my armor got scorching hot immediately. Where my right arm touched the cuirass near the armpit, a burning pain made me recoil and rip the armor off as quickly as possible. Fortunately, my Macks overwhelmed her. The staccato of spikes pounding into Mack plate and ripping through synthskin left no doubt about who was winning.

With my armor taken off, I was free of the worst pain and could watch the fight again. The body of the Mack girl looked pretty shredded by now. I chose to take a risk. “Elya, stop!”

I grabbed the Omni-Cutter I had laid nearby and sprinted towards the Mack girl. As I arrived, she already started moving again, but then I brought the Omni-Cutter down on her neck. With a hiss of melting synthskin and sparks from cutting through the metal spine, the head came off. I grabbed it and dunked it into the nearby river to douse the flames. Then I dove in myself to relieve the pain from my burn wound. Fuck, that was cold!

Target eliminated! 1 x Model 42

Reward… 100 points

So far, you have earned 520 points today. With the daily allowance since Monday, that brings your new balance to one token and 6049 points.

Half an hour later, I had bandaged my burn wounds. Fortunately, those were only second degree and proper dressings had been in the first aid kit of Herbie. I so needed to refill that. To get a bit more cooling near the wounds, I would walk around bare-chested for the rest of the day. If any peeping toms were in the woods, they would have a view to enjoy, if I may say so myself.

Elya was watching the body of the downed robot girl through a Spectracopter, but could not detect any movement. Time for the cleanup. “Elya, send the Nines to take the scrap away, but tell them to leave the gynoid alone!”

From Herbie’s fabricator I ordered a metal box specially sealed against radio waves and put the head of the Mack girl into the box. This way she would not be able to activate her body remotely, no matter what hidden transmitters she had. Then I cradled the broken body of the robot girl in Herbie’s arms and walked back to the base.

I spent the rest of the afternoon carefully disconnecting the power supply of the Type 42. Both because the Mack would not be able to do anything without it, and because I was curious about its function. Now I could retrieve the head from the box without risk.

I removed the voice box from the mangled body and reconnected it to her head with a bit of a duct tape kludge, so she could talk when I interrogated her. In a similarly jury-rigged way, I mounted her head on a stand I had printed out ad hoc. Next, I connected various electronics Elya had suggested for creating a high-speed connection to Miss Mack’s cyberbrain. Finally, an external power supply for the head which I did not switch on yet.

Later in the evening, I went online for a bit and checked on the latest Haven news. Elya checked how many kills HANAF had made with the weapons I sold them. Apparently this emergence had been a bit smaller than the previous ones.

In the latest emergence, you earned 1882 points through the weaponry you provided to HANAF. Your new balance is one token and 7931 points. It must be nice to just sit back and watch the points roll in.